Skip to main content
Portland actor, writer and filmmaker Myhraliza Aala’s star could be on the horizon this year as her dating series orbits the film festival galaxy.
Let Love Flow: An Oh Myh Dating Hell Story screens at the 40th Annual VC Film Festival, rebranded this year from the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. The episode of Aala’s series will show on Friday, May 3, as part of the festival’s #Life program of short films on love, family and personal crises.
Oh Myh Dating Hell debuted at Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival in 2021, which was digitally based due to ongoing pandemic practices, as two episodes about a Filipino woman’s misadventures with dating apps, nosy parents and feeling past her prime. Let Love Flow will show, among other things, how Aala navigates the awkwardness of meeting someone she already knows on a dating app.
“It was fun to play because I imagine this happens in real life, where you find yourself in a situation like, ‘How do I get out of this, how do I explain this?’” Aala says.
Aala has shown Oh Myh Dating Hell episodes at film festivals from Portland to Palm Springs, hoping that a studio, or a producer like actress Mindy Kaling, might see her work and develop a full series. Based on her experiences as a strike captain during the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, though, Aala thinks it could still be a while before shows like Oh Myh Dating Hell see wide distribution.
“The industry has not bounced back as we thought it would,” Aala says. “We thought we would be flooded with auditions. I was getting at least two auditions a week and at the height of it, twelve auditions a week, and now I thought I would get that back, but there’s not enough productions to get that many auditions out there.”
If Kaling misses Oh Myh Dating Hell, she might recognize Aala from her other film festival work.
Aala plays a cop in It’s What’s Inside, a Portland-filmed horror movie about an old friend mysteriously crashing a wedding. It’s What’s Inside screened at Sundance in January and will appear on Netflix later this year after a $17 million sale. Her next stop is San Diego for the showcase “Motions & Emotions: Asian Women Speak Out,” on heritage, personal history and mental health, for her short play Influenced.
“I didn’t know it was a viable story,” Aala says of Oh Myh Dating Hell. “When you make things, you’re not sure if it’s going to take off, but everyone can relate to it that’s seen it, and thinks it’s funny, and thinks it could be a real series.”