CONTENT ADVISORY
Depictions of gambling, mental illness, trauma, smoking, drinking
Canada202485 minEnglishToronto PremiereAvailable Online, Directed By Women, Drama
Deep in debt, with a house and a university-bound kid, plus a marriage on the rocks, reformed gambler Lucky sees his luck run out after getting scammed in a tax-fraud scheme. Ashamed and desperate to keep it from his family, he returns to underground backroom gambling dens, playing for big payouts to relieve the debt and win back his family’s favour. Meanwhile, each family member, unaware of Lucky’s troubles but feeling the money crunch, too, resorts to unsavoury means to dig out of their hole.
With deeply resonant characters, Gillian McKercher’s second feature film is a gripping family drama that displays great empathy for her characters and their struggles while showing Calgary's significant Chinese community rarely seen in Canadian cinema. Terry Chen (Sight), Olivia Cheng (Warrior), and Andrew Phung (Run The Burbs) star in an ensemble of actors with Prairie roots that further ground the film to its setting and to so many families' hardships.
– Aram Siu Wai Collier
Terry Chen
Olivia Cheng
Conni Miu
Andrew Phung
OFFICIAL SELECTION
Calgary International Film Festival, 2024
Vancouver International Film Festival, 2024
Gillian McKercher
Gillian McKercher is a Canadian writer, director, producer, and co-founder of Kino Sum Productions. McKercher’s first feature film as writer/director, Circle of Steel, won an Audience Award at the 2018 Calgary International Film Festival. She developed her sophomore feature film, Lucky Star, as a resident at the Canadian Film Centre and with the additional support of the CFC/Netflix Project Development Accelerator and Harold Greenberg Fund.
16 Nov, 2024 5:00 pm
TIFF Lightbox C3PG
CONTENT ADVISORY
Depictions of gambling, mental illness, trauma, smoking, drinking
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This film is scheduled to be presented fully captioned (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated). Wheelchair spaces and step-free seating is available for this screening – click below to book accessible seats.
Information on available captions will be added soon, thank you for your patience.
Join us for a Q&A immediately after the screening with director Gillian McKercher.
Amir is an aspiring chef trying to get ahead, but he can’t seem to break out and meet his own expectations or those of his parents, while his favoured younger brother Mahyar can seemingly do no wrong. When news from Iran arrives that a family friend has died and passed his entire inheritance solely to Mahyar, the mystery of the gift’s provenance begins to unravel the family's story, the image of their parents, and the relationship between the two brothers.
In 1923, Canada passed the ironically named Chinese Immigration Act — better known as the Chinese Exclusion Act — which for the next 24 years barred virtually any Chinese person from entering the country. They were the first ethnic group to be singled out in this way.
Join us for a crafty Happy Hour on Sun, Nov 17, at The Commons, 401 Richmond! Hosted by this year's Festival Creative Artist Agnes Wong, this event features a relaxed journaling and scrapbooking workshop. Bring your own stickers and ephemera to trade, share, or journal with.
Founded in Toronto in 1997, Reel Asian is Canada’s largest pan-Asian film festival and a year-round cultural organization dedicated to championing Asian and Asian diasporic artists and storytellers. What began as a grassroots film festival has grown into a national platform supporting filmmakers and audiences through screenings, education, industry initiatives, artist development, and community programming presented across Toronto, the GTA, and online across Canada.
401 Richmond Street West, The Commons (Suite 448)
Toronto, Ontario, M5V 3A8 Canada
(416) 703 – 9333
info@reelasian.com
Charitable number: 870021383RR0001
