Will a Minneapolis filmmaker say yes to her spirit guides and become a Hmong shaman?

When the shaman said it was time, Joua Lee Grande handed her camera to her teenage brother and took her place before the altar. Seated on the shaman's wooden bench in her parents' cramped north Minneapolis living room with a pair of ceremonial bells on her fingers and a black veil over her face, she felt like an impostor.

Behind her, the shaman struck his gong repeatedly, unfurling a wall of sound. If she had spirit guides, they would confirm her calling as a tvix neeb, or Hmong shaman, by causing her body to shake uncontrollably.

When the gong fell silent, she removed the bells and the veil. She felt a little shaky, but she never shook. After all, Joua didn't believe in spirits.

To her surprise, the shaman turned to her parents and explained that though Joua did not shake, he had seen her spirit guides: Joua had been chosen to become a shaman.

Recalling that day 11 years later, Joua, now 34, chuckles. "The footage [of the event] was terrible, but I was a beginner filmmaker and I thought, 'Let's just film it and see what happens!' " Joua says.

Now a veteran filmmaker whose work has been featured on World Channel and PBS Digital Studios, and has been screened at festivals across the country, she has revisited this footage of her txhib, or "shake test" in the making of "Spirited."

In the feature-length documentary, Joua follows her journey to reconnect with Hmong shamanism while reckoning with the challenges that haunt her community. As the film's director, producer and main subject, she also explores the as yet unanswered question: Will she say yes to her spirit guides and become a shaman, or will she choose to walk away?

Growing up, Joua remembers the overflowing houses, the mouthwatering aroma of boiled pork and greens, and the roar of the shaman's gong. During the healing rituals she attended as a child, as many as 100 Hmong people would squeeze into a family's home to bear witness to the shaman's work.

In Hmong spirituality, shamans act as spiritual healers who move between the physical and spirit world. They are critical mediums in a system of belief built on animism and ancestor veneration.

As the daughter of Hmong refugees in a tight-knit, insular community, Joua learned about the world around her through the media her dad brought home. An academic back in Laos, "when he came [to the U.S.], he had to learn the language and do hard labor, but he still would constantly buy books and documentaries," Joua says.

Documentaries were her teachers, and now she wields them as a tool to educate others. "There are so many stories that we're not hearing because they are misconstrued in the media or left out," Joua says. "I wanted to be a part of telling these stories that we don't hear about."

An agnostic Shaman?

In Joua's early 20s, her mother told her that a shaman had identified her agnostic daughter as a shaman. They both laughed and dismissed it as a joke.

Joua was raised in Hmong spirituality, but never fully understood it. "Our elders wanted us to learn, but they didn't have time to teach us," Joua says. While this used to frustrate her, she now understands that navigating the challenges of a war and relocating to new country left little room for anything else.

Yet Joua's persistent illnesses prompted her mother to reconsider the shaman's words. Future shamans often experience unexplained illness as their spirit guides attempt to connect with them. When another shaman confirmed Joua's calling, her mother contacted a third shaman to do a shake test.

As a budding filmmaker, Joua wanted to make a documentary about Hmong spirituality. Though she didn't believe in spirits, she agreed to the test for her mother's sake. And for her film.

Once the shake test confirmed her calling, the shaman told Joua her next step was finding a teacher. However, her growing anger about the relationship between Hmong spirituality and gendered oppression led her to close the door on the film and shamanism for the next five years. "There were things that were going on that I felt were abusive to women and I was like, 'Well, if this is what the spiritual practices are, I want no part in it,' " Joua says.

Spiritual threats, spiritual healing

Joua had witnessed the way patriarchal violence harmed women and girls in her community, including herself. "Culturally and historically, it's very normal for women to be told to stay and deal with [abuse]. A huge reason why women stay is because of the spiritual threats," Joua says.

Traditional Hmong spirituality teaches that a wife's spirits belong to her husband. If a woman divorces, no one will take care of her funeral rites and her spirits will roam homeless for eternity.

"A lot of times, people don't connect the spiritual piece to abuse, but I have because I've seen women in the community go through it," Joua says.

It wasn't until Joua's marriage to her partner, Brian Grande, that she began to seriously reconsider her calling. Brian's Salvadoran family is Christian, so Hmong elders told Joua that she was automatically a Christian and that she should forget her calling as a shaman.

"I was like, 'Oh, heck no! You don't get to decide that for me!' " Joua says. "I realized I was still hungry to have something spiritual."

Soon after, Joua had a persistent knee injury. Her mother called a shaman to treat her. As she sat on the shaman's bench and gazed out on the room full of people gathered to witness her healing, something switched in her.

"Our rituals require community members being here and lending a hand," Joua says. "So much of it is embedded in community, which is a beautiful thing. For the first time, I felt like, 'Wow, what an honor.' It reignited me and I realized that I had a lot more to learn."

Filming the path

In "Spirited," Joua's journey is interwoven with the narratives of Hmong shamans who are reclaiming and reforming their traditions. "I started to understand that the culture is extremely patriarchal, but the spiritual piece is not," Joua says. "There's a way to practice this that empowers women and queer folks. It hasn't been done yet, but that model is in the process of being created."

One of the leaders of this movement, and a primary character in "Spirited," is master shaman Billy Lor. For Billy, the way forward is back.

"Hmong culture is very binary — male, female, woman, man only. But when we look at our traditions and how we perceive the spirit or the soul, it is nonbinary. It is male, it is female, it is the universe," Billy says.

As he reaches back to his ancestors' practices, Billy is finding the tools to craft a future that welcomes all Hmong people. "I want to break down the culture and go back to the ancient ways we practiced," Billy says. "How did our ancestors do it? If they were inclusive in the beginning, where did we go wrong? Where can we deconstruct and reconstruct?"

"Spirited" is in early production. Yet, even now, Joua doesn't know how it will end.

As a filmmaker, she can picture a cinematic finale where a formerly agnostic Hmong American woman becomes a spiritual healer. But life, she knows, isn't a movie. "It's an honor to become a healer, but it's also so much responsibility," Joua says, one that would come with a sacrifice.

Joua expects the documentary to be released in a year or two. But she's already come to one conclusion: "Even though the documentary is about will I or won't I become a shaman, it really isn't about that. It's about my journey to find a community. It's about my journey to find where I belong."