Celebrating 20 years of Reel Asian’s pitch competition, five finalist filmmakers will take the stage to pitch their projects to a live jury and audience. One will win a prize package designed to help bring their short film to life, including a cash award, in-kind studio packages, and the opportunity to screen the completed film at the 31st edition of the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival.
Pitch Winner Prize Package
The winning applicant/team will receive:
Pitch Finalist Package
Each finalist team will receive:
Andrew Phung
Actor, Host & Comedian, RUN THE BURBS
Comedian, Actor, and Host Andrew Phung’s infectious and relatable personality has made him one of Canada’s top and most recognized comedic performers. He is best known for his award-winning performance on the hit CBC/Netflix show, Kim’s Convenience, where he won five consecutive Canadian Screen Awards in the category of Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. Andrew is also the co-creator, executive producer, and star of the popular CBC and Hulu series Run the Burbs, for which he won the 2025 Canadian Screen Award for Best Lead Performer in a Comedy Series. His other recent television credits include LOL: Last One Laughing Canada on Amazon Prime, Hate the Player on Paramount + and he’s the host of the new cooking competition series Big Burger Battle on the Flavour Network.
Sana Malik
Filmmaker & Journalist
Sana is a Pakistani-Canadian filmmaker and journalist who has reported on immigration, detention, and gender since 2011. In 2017, she founded This is Worldtown, a platform that supports women of colour visual storytellers.
Chrisann Hessing
Impact Producer
Chrisann Hessing is a documentary filmmaker and impact producer whose work explores culture, identity and transformation. She is the founder of Culture Shift Media, a boutique film and impact company based in Toronto.
Marushka Almeida
Filmmaker
Marushka Almeida is a Goan-Indian writer/producer whose credits include Crave’s Meatballs and Late Bloomer, and SyFy/Peacock’s Revival. A 2025 Playback’s Ten to Watch and a WGC Screenwriting nominee, Marushka makes failure look cinematic.
Zarrar Kahn
Filmmaker, THE LION DOES NOT CONCERN ITSELF (2026)
Zarrar Kahn is a Toronto-based writer, director and producer whose debut film In Flames was Pakistan’s Entry for the 2024 Academy Awards, a New York Times Critic’s Pick, and premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival in Director’s Fortnight, where it was nominated for the Camera d’Or.
Sara Jade Alfaro-Dehghani
Filmmaker, HAIR! (2024)
Raised in the 90’s Ontario ‘burbs in a hot blooded Mexican-Iranian dancing family, Sara Jade Alfaro-Dehghani makes movies, commercials, choreographies, awe-inspiring photographs, funny scripts, and sometimes -short answers just slightly too long.
21 Nov, 2026 7:00 pm
Bathurst Street Theatre
How do cinematographers build sustainable careers while developing their craft across different formats, genres, and production models? This all-cinematographer conversation explores the paths that led them to television and film, and how they continue to build their craft and sustain themselves.
18 Nov. 6:00 pm
Drawing on the Disability Screen Office’s newly launched REFRAMING ACCESS: A BEST PRACTICES GUIDE ON DISABILITY INCLUSION IN CANADA'S SCREEN INDUSTRY, this conversation will explore how filmmakers can establish inclusive accessibility practices across all stages of production and beyond.
17 Nov. 6:30 pm
Ashley Duong’s BA'S BOOK, Reel Asian’s opening night film, begins with her father’s memoir and unfolds with the process of recreating her family’s history of war, displacement, and migration from Vietnam.
12 Nov. 2:00 pm
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
