Reel Asian is excited to be co-presenting two programmes at this year's Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children, unspooling April 17-23 at the Cineplex Odeon Sheppard Centre (4861 Yonge St, at Sheppard subway station) and Famous Players Canada Square (2190 Yonge St, at Eglinton subway station) venues. Sprockets is an initiative of TIFF that offers children and youth the opportunity to learn about cultural perspectives from around the world through the power of the moving image.
Co-presenting these uptown screenings helps Reel Asian support its ongoing efforts to reach out to audiences outside the downtown core. The importance of family is a common thread running across all Asian cultures and communities, and these screenings are a great way for Reel Asian to reach out to families with children.
Garuda In My Heart (Garuda Di Dadaku)
Ifa Isfansyah | Indonesia 2009 | 96min | Recommended for ages 9+/grades 4-7
In Bahasa Indonesia with English subtitles | Subtitles read aloud at selected screenings | Click here for screening times
Twelve-year-old Bayu is a talented soccer player living in Indonesia with his grandfather and widowed mother. Bayu dreams of representing his country as a member of the national Under 13 soccer team; instead, his grandfather signs him up for classes to enhance his education. Encouraged by his wheelchair-bound best friend Heri, Bayu decides to practise secretly in a rundown cemetery, where together they meet Zahra, the daughter of the cemetery’s caretaker, and a friendship emerges as they bond over helping Bayu prepare for the team tryouts. When his grandfather becomes ill, Bayu feels guilty about deceiving him and decides to quit playing. Can Heri and Zahra convince him to pick up soccer again and follow his dreams?
School Days With A Pig (ブタがいた教室)
Testsu Maeda (前田哲) | Japan 2008 | 109min | Recommended for ages 8+/grades 4-6
In Japanese with English subtitles | Subtitles read aloud at selected screenings | Click here for screening times
As a Grade 6 class project, Mr. Hoshi has decided that his twenty-eight students should raise a piglet together. He makes it clear, however, that the class will eat the pig together at graduation. The students build a home for the pig, which they’ve decided to name P-Chan. Other teachers (and some parents) question the rookie teacher’s project, knowing that the bond the children form with the pig will be hard to break. But Mr. Hoshi and the school’s principal fight for the valuable life lesson that the students will learn. As the year comes to a close, some students begin to argue that P-Chan is their friend and should live, while others maintain that they should keep to the promise that they made when they began the project.
Elsewhere at Sprockets, Reel Asian alumni Gloria Kim (Rock Garden: A Love Story, RA 2007) and Jonathan Ng (RA 2009 pitch winner, established category) both have films in the Canadian Shorts programme; Kim with The Auction and Ng with Alpha Beta Complex. Public ticket prices start at $10.61 for adults and $6.60 for children (under the age of 18), plus taxes, fees & service charges. Buy tickets online or call 416-968-FILM (3456) to charge-by-phone. Same-day sales, subject to availability, begin at the venues starting one hour before that venue's first screening of the day.