
All feature works are eligible for this prize.
$4,000 cash prize
Cathy Yan

All first feature films are eligible for this prize.
$4,000 cash prize
Ashley Duong

All Canadian works are eligible for this prize
$1,000 cash prize
Kat Jayme

All short films and videos are eligible for this prize. Opportunity to broadcast on Air Canada’s in-flight entertainment screens on international flights
Joey Chu
Belmaya Nepali
Syafiq Jaafar
Yusuke Oishi
Ray Savaya
Alex Humilde
Nardeep Khurmi
Andrew Chung

All animated works are eligible for this prize.
$500 cash prize
Trevor Jimenez

All films made by female-identified Ontario-based artists are eligible for this prize.
$1,000 cash prize + $1,200 programming pass and one-year membership to WIFT-T.
Carole Nguyen

All feature works are eligible for this prize, selected through a tally of votes from the viewers of the 22nd edition Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival.
$5,000 cash prize
Shinichiro Ueda
with support from

$4,000 cash prize + $4,250 in services
Kristina Wong
$2,800 in services
Rahul Chaturvedi & Qais Pasha
Jason Gorber
Jason Gorber is a film journalist and member of the Toronto Film Critics Association. He is the Managing Editor of ThatShelf.com, a Features Editor at DTK Magazine and a critic for HighDefDigest. His writing has appeared in Esquire, The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, Screen Anarchy, Birth.Movies.Death, IndieWire and more.
Jason McGrath
Jason McGrath is an Associate Professor in Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Minnesota, with affiliations in Moving Image Studies and Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature. His book Postsocialist Modernity: Chinese Cinema, Literature, and Criticism in the Market Age was published by Stanford University Press, and his current book project is entitled Inscribing the Real: Realism and Convention in Chinese Cinema from the Silent Era to the Digital Age.
Ananya Ohri
Ananya Ohri is most interested in exploring how what we say shapes who we become. She was the Executive Director of the Regent Park Film Festival for 7 years and is currently the Artistic Director of the festival’s nation-wide project, Home Made Visible.
Casey Mecija
Casey Mecija is an accomplished multi-disciplinary artist, primarily working in the fields of music and film. She played in Ohbijou, the Canadian orchestral pop band, and recently released her first solo album, Psychic Materials. Casey is also an award-winning filmmaker whose work has screened internationally. She is completing a PhD at the University of Toronto where she researches art, media and cultural studies as they relate to queer diaspora.
Lillian Chan
Lillian Chan is an illustrator and animation filmmaker from Toronto, and was Reel Asian’s Spotlight Artist of 2017. Her children’s film, Jaime Lo, small and shy, was produced by the National Film Board of Canada, and won public prize at both the Ottawa International Animation Festival and Anima Mundi in Brazil. Her favourite pastime is drawing silly doodles of her two cats, Frankie and Mao. See more of her work at www.lilch.ca
Barbara Goslawski
Barbara Goslawski is a freelance writer whose work has been featured in national dailies and magazines, and is a broadcaster turned podcaster, working as co-host and producer of Frameline, a weekly film chat show, which began at CKLN and expanded to international reach at Radio Regent and now iTunes. Barbara has been an independent programmer for cinemas, special events, and festivals across Canada and around the world, most notably in Belgium and Taiwan. Other career highlights include her work as a distributor of shorts and avant-garde works at the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre.
Michael Fukushima
Michael Fukushima is studio head and executive producer of the National Film Board of Canada’s world-renowned English Animation Studio. After freelancing following college, Fukushima joined the Animation Studio in 1990 as a filmmaker, then became a studio producer, and is now head of the fabled studio, with over 200 films (and some nice awards and nominations) under his belt.
Teresa M. Ho
With over twenty years of experience in the film & television industry, Teresa M. Ho is currently in production on Season 2 of Frankie Drake Mysteries for CBC/UKTV, and will screen on CBC the feature documentary My Piece of the City about youth in Regent Park. Previously, she managed multiple units on NBC Universal’s reboot TV Series Heroes Reborn, and all of Shaftesbury production teams for over eight years.
Aliya Pabani
Aliya Pabani is an artist and podcaster. Most recently, she was host/producer of CANADALAND’s arts and culture podcast The Imposter, a show that covered everything from interviews with groundbreaking artists like Tanya Tagaq, to the story of an early synthesizer pioneer from the Maritimes who scored the Apollo 11 moon landing.
*All decisions made by the juries are final and binding and not subject to appeal.