Kagan Goh’s story starts in Singapore, but really comes alive in Vancouver, where he’s made a name for himself as an award-winning filmmaker and writer. A spoken word poet, playwright, actor, and mental health advocate, he is someone who refuses to separate art from lived experience.
When Kagan was twenty-three, he was diagnosed with manic depression. Instead of hiding it, he turned his journey with mental illness into the heartbeat of his work. His motto says it all: “Nothing about us without us.”
Over the years, Kagan has created a powerful collection of films, always shining a light on stories that don’t get told enough: Mind Fuck (1996), Stolen Memories (2012), Breaking the Silence (2015), The Day My Cat Saved My Life (2021), and Common Law (2024). His work has screened on five continents, earned over 25 jury and audience awards, and secured national broadcast windows on OMNI Television. Common Law, his most recent film, features actor Berlin Lu in the role of Kagan himself, a performance that earned Lu the 2024 People’s Choice Award for Best Overall Performance in a Short Film at the Vancouver Asian Film Festival.
In 2021, Kagan published Surviving Samsara: A Memoir of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs and Mental Illness, a raw and honest look at what it means to live with manic depression. The book was shortlisted for the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize and is now being adapted into a three-season limited TV series called A Delicate Imbalance, currently in development.
Learn more about Kagan's creative journey.
Watch a trailer of his film "Common Law".
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