Bless Me

Bless Me follows Chen, a Chinese international student living alone in the United States, as everyday fear gradually reshapes his understanding of safety. Surrounded by language barriers, social suspicion, anti-immigrant anxiety, and constant warnings from home, Chen turns to religious symbols and spiritual objects for protection. After buying a handgun for self-defense, however, he begins to see the weapon as the only form of protection that actually works.

Rather than focusing on gun violence itself, the film examines the moment before violence, when fear has already begun to change a person’s behavior, identity, and sense of self-worth. Through the contrast between religious symbols and the gun, Bless Me explores how cultural displacement, institutional anxiety, and the normalization of fear can push an individual toward a distorted belief in power and protection.