Korean-American sisters and classical musicians, Viv and Gia, must grapple with diverging ambitions amidst the strain of caring for their ailing mother.

Set in early-2000s SoCal, Smoking Tigers follows a Korean American girl as she navigates derision and growing tensions while balancing the duality of her low-income family and wealthy, elite high school environment.

When a 10-year-old violin prodigy immigrates from Seoul with her troubled teenage brother, and her newly-single pragmatic mother; she leaves behind her father and musical hero, with whom she desperately tries to connect to in her fantastical daydreams. But when the family is met with the disillusions of their American dreams, her idyllic image of her father begins to crumble, threatening to destroy the very thing they came to salvage: their family.