The screening for Bad Axe will be shown at TIFF Bell Lightbox 4.
USA2022102 minutesEnglishToronto PremiereDocumentary
How do you love a place that doesn’t seem to love you back Director David Siev broaches that question in Bad Axe, a complicated love letter to his hometown. Siev’s dad, a survivor of the Cambodian Killing Fields, has spent decades building a new life in Bad Axe, but the city is not always hospitable to immigrants. Siev’s sister’s outspoken support for Black Lives Matter puts her at odds with her family restaurant’s most loyal, Trump-supporting customers. Unfolding across the turbulent year of 2020, this personal documentary follows Siev’s family as they struggle to keep their restaurant afloat amid family tensions, neo-Nazis, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
At times, the film is an unsettling portrait of racism’s existence in our everyday lives, but it equally insists on being about family and community. In his feature-documentary debut, Siev gives us an intimate account of a family in troubled times, fraught with uncertainty, yet held by a bond as deep as roots go.
– Ron Ma
AWARDS
Audience Award Winner, Documentary Feature – SXSW, 2022
pecial Jury Recognition, Exceptional Intimacy in Storytelling – SXSW, 2022
David Siev
David Siev holds producing, camera, and consulting credits on everything from hidden-camera blockbuster comedies like Bad Trip (2021) to rock-and-roll biopics such as The Dirt (2019).
11 Nov, 2022 9:00 pm
TIFF Bell Lightbox 4The screening for Bad Axe will be shown at TIFF Bell Lightbox 4.
Rated PG
Content Warning: Racist language and situations
This film is not captioned.
This panel brings together Asian Canadian media producers to discuss the current Canadian film and TV landscape. They’ll discuss their path and expertise in producing stories across a variety of genres and formats. What are the stories they’re focused on producing? What is the role of producers in this current landscape, and what is being done to increase the number of projects produced by Asian creatives?
Taking a wide scope, Canadian documentary filmmaker Karen Cho’s Big Fight in Little Chinatown traverses Chinatowns in New York City, Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto, and San Francisco, shining a light on the twin legacies of displacement and resistance that characterize these neighbourhoods.
The story of Chol Soo Lee, a Korean American who was falsely convicted of a 1973 murder in San Francisco. After activists led a pan-Asian American movement to free him, he was finally released after 10 years in prison.
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, Asian diasporic, and Asian Canadian filmmakers and artists. 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
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