The Donut King (2024)

This is a documentary about the story of donuts in California, where it turns out that a large portion of those doughnuts are made by Cambodian refugees and their families. And that’s because of one man: Ben Tek “Ted” Ngoy, a Cambodian refugee who made millions through his doughnut shops, helped hundreds of Cambodian families fleeing Pol Pot’s murderous regime. It took six months between Ngoy landing in a US refugee camp in 1975 to him being handed the keys to his first doughnut store. He worked almost 24 hours a day to achieve it, juggling three jobs and a young family, but focused on the idea of being somebody. As he says, “When you’re poor, you’ll do anything.” By 1979 he would own 25 doughnut shops and go on to sponsor more than 100 more Cambodian families fleeing the war. It wasn’t just pure selflessness, of course, he saw these families as providing even more business opportunities and money. It is a rags to riches story, withe the inevitable fall from grace that so often happens, and where Cambodian families start to be able to own their own shops as a result. I would say that the story could have been told more succinctly, with fewer donuts in the mix, but somehow, this sat just about right with me, and if I hadn't been on a plane when I saw it I might have gone out to get a donut myself.