(re)Rites of Passage is a special anthology published as part of our 25th-anniversary celebrations, and a follow-up to Reel Asian: Asian Canada on Screen (published in 2007 for Reel Asian’s 10th anniversary).
It’s 1978 in Pakistan, amid guitar riffs and late-night shows, rockstar Lenny from the Christian community is offered the chance to reinvent himself as a state-sanctioned singer.
Oscillating between the past and the present, a woman sits in a hospital room, alone with her dying father.
Set up on a pre-arranged date by their old-fashioned Indian parents, Ravi (Karan Soni) and Rita (Geraldine Viswanathan) seem to have nothing in common, which makes their first encounter comically awkward.
Painstakingly detailed, director Honami Yano tells the story of a little girl who reflects on the last summer with her father.
Director Boyoung Kim takes us into a world where everything you need can be rented from huge vending machines. A girl does whatever she can to become a guitarist, despite others choosing otherwise.
Highlighting the rich tenacity of Toronto’s East Chinatown community, this film explores the area’s people, sidewalks, and businesses, giving voice to their experiences of community, identity, anxieties, and hopes for the future.
What would you do if you bumped into your high school sweetheart? On a peculiar tour bus to Mekong Delta, 50-year-old Tam is hopeful for a chance of reconciliation—or maybe he's not.
In this artist talk, Golboo Amani introduces us to her body of work, which often addresses and challenges the formal conditions of knowledge production and invites us to consider the power of alternate sites of pedagogy in creating collective agency and community building.
Desh Pardesh ended in 2001, in large part due to a massive cut in public arts funding. Two decades later, organizers and artists from the festival discuss the impact of the festival and the ways in which we can learn from the success and challenges of running an unapologetic and political arts festival in the city of Toronto.
Employees at a plasticware store, Sithu and Min Htet, plan a mission for Sithu to elope with a girl.
Eager for an escape from family, Safiya moves out to a sublet of an acquaintance, Ahu. Her new place is peaceful, but she soon comes across a journal with entries that take her on a reflective journey—Ahu’s journal.
Follow Canadian Spotlight artist Ali Kazimi on a deep dive into his archive-infused films Continuous Journey and Random Acts of Legacy. Topics will include technical looks at film preservation, editing, music composition, and creative considerations of perspective and collaboration.
Through the medium of animation, this panel explores the creative process and tools for geo-specific settings that serve as character in story—from something large and abstract like a “nation” to something detailed like a neighbourhood or building structure.
Cafe owner Kato closes up shop on an ordinary night only to be interrupted by a voice from the TV: his own voice, two minutes in the future. As Kato investigates the strange occurrence, the night and time itself start to unravel. Kato’s friends and colleagues get enveloped into his time warp, and the results are hilarious, calamitous and existential.
A series of rhythmically repeated images of self-caress and cleansing are used to express an Asian woman's sense of emerging self, her growing strength, and her desire for the erotic touch of another.
On a quest to rebuild home, an alien encounters a reverent worshipper, a cynical construction worker, and a mysterious medium, observing their varying ideas of home.
How much would you put into a relationship? Bubble brings us along on a couple's date that takes a strange plunge into vegetarian cuisine.
Confronting intergenerational trauma, two sons of a Karen woman reunite with their father, a former Air Force officer.
After trying on a binder and a packer for the first time, Krishna, a trans man, has to face his own insecurities during his journey of overcoming his fear of passing and of coming out.
Ali Kazimi is Reel Asian’s Canadian Artist Spotlight in 2021. Appropriately for our 25th festival, the documentary filmmaker, media artist, activist, author, and educator has been a fixture in the Asian Canadian community, and we celebrate his over three decades of vital contributions to Canadian media.
This panel is specifically built for filmmakers working in children’s programming. Join this informative discussion with CBC to learn how to break into and develop a career in the field in a way that can create a better future for kids.
Since the advent of cinema and the forced colonization of the islands, Hawai’i stories on film have too often been told by outsiders. Reel Asian is bringing a spotlight onto two acclaimed Hawai’i-made dramatic feature films, WAIKIKI and I WAS A SIMPLE MAN.
Driving in a rural Albertan neighbourhood, a young woman is stopped by a middle-aged Punjabi woman standing on the side of the road; things take a turn for the uncanny, as the young woman is presented with a choice that will change the course of her life.
If it had to be summed up, Code Name: Nagasaki is a documentary shot by Fredrik S. Hana, following his close friend and film protagonist Marius Lunde on his journey to connect with his estranged mother, who cut ties with the family when Lunde was a child, and relocated to Japan. The experience of watching the film, however, far exceeds this tidy storyline.
Continuous Journey is a complex tale of hope, despair, treachery, and tragedy. It is a revealing Canadian story with global ramifications, set in a time when the British Empire seemed omnipresent and its subjects were restless and seeking self-determination.
Damascus Dreams is a reflexive documentary essay presented in a series of sections framed by voiceovers of Serri and her father. The film explores and interrogates the fraught notions of dreams, and memories of “home,” moving loosely through old video footage of the family home in Syria, interviews with Syrians who had to leave or flee because of the civil war, conversations between Serri and her father, and poetic, dreamlike sequences.
Monica (Sujata Day), a former spelling-bee champion, lives at home with her ailing mother and tutors young spelling-bee hopefuls whose parents hover around, in hopes that their children will follow in her footsteps. When she is offered a dream job in another city, she considers accepting it, until her estranged brother Sonny (Ritish Rajan) shows up unexpectedly, opening up old wounds and familial tensions.
Mrs. Wang, an elderly widow, combs the beach in search of treasure and discovers a gold tooth that magically changes her lonely life.
Seo, the director of a romance, is at his wit’s end trying to finish his film. Editor Park has been brought in to help fix it. But it’s not your typical post-production problems of recalibrating the film’s story structure. This film is haunted.
Deep in the night, Fai and his friends are sleeping on the streets of Sham Shui Po, the poorest district in Hong Kong. The police arrive without notice and clear out their belongings, their makeshift homes reduced to roadside trash. With the help of social worker Ms. Ho, Fai takes the case to court, while he and his friends struggle to create a new home.
Carefully set and intentionally crafted, the site-specificity of these short films recognize the role of place as a character integral to offering layered understandings of self, community, and purpose.
Due to popular demand, we're screening ISLANDS once again, for free on the last night of our 25th anniversary festival at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema at 4PM ET.
Set to an expressive soundtrack, Vangie is a miserable contractual sales lady who uncovers the ultimate jaw-dropping secret to regularization in a desperate attempt to save her job.
Visually transformative, Eyes and Horns is a captivating and immersive experience that delves into the destruction of gender binaries and boundaries.
Combining multiple artistic formats, this intimate portrait is a transnational meditation through time and space of an international art student studying abroad in the United States.
Amid the abundance of narratives revolving around kin, this presentation of shorts brings refreshing and surprising takes into the un/intentional family-centric storytelling landscape, offering room for possibilities and reimaginings.
Sing along to this collection of short films featuring characters who find themselves confronting systemic, structural, and personal challenges, all while defying conventional narratives and reconstructing alternative possibilities of storytelling
Struggling with finding her artistic voice, Jessie is an aspiring photographer and art student trying to balance her role as a daughter in her larger family.
After the fall of Saigon in 1975, Thao and Sao Maï, two sisters separated by the war, exchange letters to connect and relieve their loneliness.
Subverting the body-horror genre, Fresh Blood follows 14-year-old Maya, who is left to process her own fears of entering womanhood alone when she gets her first period.
Aman, a young aspiring writer, moved to Kuala Lumpur to follow his dreams, but all he has is his late father’s old car and nowhere to live. To make ends meet, he uses his room on wheels to illegally earn money through a driving-service app. This is how he meets Bella, a student from Penang.
A video poem about one woman's longing and desire for another whom she is shy to approach.
Set in a rural coastal village in the Philippines, Mona trains under her mother to start work as a professional mourner for hire.
Commissioned by the Polaris Music Prize to honour the 2020 shortlist nomination of Pantayo’s self-titled debut, Huwag Mataranta! follows BB, who finds her power in a mystical night market run by figures of Filipino folklore.
Wistful and witty, director Viv Li succinctly recounts the nine days she spends in her hometown of Beijing after being abroad for 10 years.
On the pastoral North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, the end is near for Masao, an ill and elderly man with regrets to spare. As he looks back, his family history, dreams, and mythology swirl around him as ghosts he carries with him in his final days.
Imperfectly Complete features a resonating performance from Burmese American Chrissy Aung in the role of Lucy, who struggles whether to reveal the truth of herself when the blind guitarist she cares for is about to regain his vision.
How does one trace lineages and map origins? Derailing form and convention, each of these films paves new pathways of understanding by reconceptualizing the relations between pasts, presents, and futures.
After being met with the destabilizing news of her parents’ divorce, Angie, a teenage, mixed-race Asian girl, reckons with her multiracial identity and sexual awakening in this quirky coming-of-age story.
Independence Day takes a shallow-end dive in presenting what a picnic might look like within the Filipinx diasporic experience in North America.
A disquieting fable with dark humour, a child tries to gain her father's affection, but the family dog proves to be a fierce rival.
On a late summer day, Wutt Yee plans to chase a better chance in life at the cost of neglecting her own happiness.
Looking to pick up something new? In this lesson, Kayla teaches you conversational phrases, common expressions, and much, much more in Tagalog.
Tenderly dedicated to their chosen family, Sky, a non-binary Chinese American drag sensation, returns to their hometown and ends up confronting their estranged father about childhood memories that continue to haunt them.
76-year-old Arturo Madrid reminisces on the hardships, wonders, and realities of migrating from the Philippines to the United States in this tender and poetic documentary.
Ann Kaneko’s Manzanar, Diverted invokes this history to tell the story of generations of women: Native American, Japanese American WWII incarcerees, and environmentalists, fighting for the future of the valley. Through a mix of testimonials, archival, and aerial photography, Kaneko weaves intersectional histories with the urgency of the present.
Delectably genre-bending, this programme serves up a seven-course meal that will surely leave you questioning whether you were even hungry to begin with.
One night, Seolgi is lying on a grass field with friends when a shooting star falls and dark intrusive thoughts hit her, bursting with movement and blooming bright colours.
Hsiao-chi has never been an ordinary girl. She is always a step faster than everyone else, perhaps too fast for her to connect with anyone romantically. With Valentine’s Day approaching, Hsiao-chi’s anxious about finding someone. When she finds herself the dream date, she goes to bed looking forward to Valentine’s Day. But to her surprise and disappointment, she wakes up on February 15. Maybe A-tai, the bus driver who is a step slower than everyone else, has the answer to her missing Valentine’s Day.
Two Filipino Canadians candidly reflect on how separating from their mothers during immigration has affected their mental health and family cohesion.
Narrative in Other Mediums is a panel that brings together creatives working in formats like video games, music videos, and commercials to discuss their experience and expertise with narrative construction and creative direction.
Nectar is a portrait film that explores the beauty and complexities of fatness, queerness, race, joy, desire, and body autonomy.
After losing his best friend, an elderly pug named Henry must depend on his owner for help.
A film you won’t forget, One Night Elsewhere takes place in a sleepy rural village, offering a surrealistic countryside night journey with a monk, a villager, and a piece of meat.
Shy, sheltered, middle-aged Joshua lives with his elderly parents and is desperately lonely as he longs for a wife. When he’s suddenly forced into a caretaking role for his family, Joshua goes further adrift into isolation, and his Scarborough bungalow feels like a prison. Help arrives unexpectedly when his cousin Marisol flies in from overseas to help—except now, Joshua finds himself confronted with emotions and experiences he’s never had before.
Our Opening Night presentation is the in-person screening of ISLANDS on November 10 at 7:30pm at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema. Guests in attendance include director Martin Edralin, and cast members Sheila Lotuaco and Esteban Comilang.
When a highly respectable family moves into the neighborhood, Kira grows suspicious of her new neighbors' seemingly flawless daughter.
Inspired by director Aiken Chau’s experiences at the dinner table, a fly wreaks havoc on a family's dinner at a restaurant.
Inspired by the 12th- to 13th-century Japanese picture scroll Bird and Beast Character Caricature, this animation presents one unfolding scroll featuring Japanese and English wordplay through marine animals.
When Frances and her children come upon a seemingly abandoned little girl, their attempts to help have unforeseen consequences.
While offering a proper funeral to a severed bird’s head, Ah Ger is unexpectedly visited by the ghost of her grandmother, who urges her to help find and care for her egg.
Absence|Presence is a series of panel conversations, screenings, and workshops reintroducing Desh Pardesh to Reel Asian’s audiences and community. Desh Pardesh was a multidisciplinary arts and culture festival that engaged with the political issues of South Asia and its diasporas through a multi-day festival and conference.
From a pile of deteriorating 16 mm home movies from 1936 to 1951, a moving story emerges of a Chinese American family, set against the backdrop of race and class in Chicago.
Guest-programmed by Thaiddhi in partnership with the Minikino S-Express Short Film Program Exchange, this collection of short films showcases young and new voices of independent filmmakers from Myanmar amid the sociopolitical changes of the country.
It starts simple enough. In town on a stopover, years after she transitioned, Kris is meeting her college ex-girlfriend Naomi again for the first time. But seeing an ex is never simple. As the evening unfolds, the past inevitably creeps back into their conversations.
Sentient and existential, Sushi begins to wonder if there’s more to life than serving himself out to consumers.
Spanning over a decade from 1984 to 1996, Shooting Indians: A Journey with Jeffrey Thomas is a portrait of Jeffrey Thomas, a self-described “Urban Iroquois” photographer, exploring the influences on his life that led him to his career.
Recognizing the in/tangible ways feelings and relations can influence one’s actions, these six films tenderly hold the complexities of characters, places, and memories that are more than enough just as they are.
Life at home for Maya isn’t the best, but things are different when she’s with her friend, Neelam. After a heated argument with her parents, Maya goes over to Neelam’s. The tensions that rise between them reveal the undeniable love and hurt they carry.
So You Think You Can Pitch is back! Celebrate our 15th year of pitch competitions by supporting your favourite emerging filmmakers in our live event! Featuring a total of five finalist individuals or teams, the winner will walk away with our amazing prize package to kickstart or finish their short film, including a cash award, in-kind support, and the opportunity to premiere their work with us at next year’s festival!
In Los Angeles’s Chinatown, Sammi tries to help her parents keep their seafood restaurant afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A modern retelling of an Indonesian myth of the same name, Anjani struggles to regain control as her mother tries to sell the house that doubled as her father's puppetry studio.
Aisha believes it was the endless rain, while Ambadi insists it was the sea. Amid their bickering, three children embark on a quest to trace the origins of their village stream.
An endearing portrait of director Ian Bawa’s father as he attempts to give life and marital advice to his bodybuilding and image-obsessed son in this hybrid semi-autobiographical short.
Amid a textured beauty salon and late-night vibes full of tension, Pich navigates her restrained interest in the delivery man, who spends his evenings driving through Phnom Penh's streets.
This panel is specifically built for filmmakers working in children’s programming. Join this informative discussion with CBC to learn how to break into and develop a career in the field in a way that can create a better future for kids.
Sweet Memories is an ode to nostalgic memories of childhood crushes, featuring the 1977 Hawaiian track “Lihue” by Nohelani Cypriano.
In a society different from what we know, a hotel in Taipei welcomes suicidal people and assists them in committing the act by providing several methods that they can choose from. Over the course of one night, a receptionist starts to defy the rules and develops an unusual friendship with a hotel guest who can't make up her mind if she wants to live or die.
Racialized filmmakers often wrestle with the narrative limits of identity politics when wanting to celebrate and push for complexity and abundance. Join us in conversation with filmmakers working in different mediums for various platforms on how they negotiate their relationships with storytelling and identity politics within Canadian filmmaking.
A mysterious tiger walks through the forest, barely revealing itself, save for a few rare and magical glimpses. This allegorical fiction begins Pallavi Paul’s description of systemic police violence in Delhi, India, based on events suppressed from official history.
First programmed as part of last year’s festival, this panel continues to reckon with the function of art, festival, and gallery spaces in a time of crisis.
Dokkaebi (Korean goblins) watch our deeds and may choose to help or punish us accordingly. This Short/Documentary/Music Video explores different aspects of Dokkaebi via original music that incorporates a mix of traditional Korean drumming with rock, jazz, and turntables.
After 91 years of continuous operation, a camera captures the last breath of Nakagawa Photo Studio, the first photo studio in northern Peru founded by Masao Nakagawa.
The echoes of grief linger decades after in a South Asian family that didn’t—couldn’t—get around to talking about it.
All cards are on the table when Noor brings Luz home for the first time on the family's annual game night.
In the electrifying lead-up to the multi-city Aurat March (Women’s March) in Pakistan, director Anam Abbas follows grassroots organizers as they navigate a deeply surveilled and violent environment to assert a growing, nation-wide feminist movement. Negotiating freedoms with fearful relatives and dodging constant scrutiny, activists move with unbreakable commitment to galvanizing their communities with a radical feminist agenda.
Mi-yeon seems to be living the perfect life as a choirmaster and the wife of a successful man. In comparison, her sisters Hee-sook and Mi-ok seem to be miserable, making Mi-yeon frustrated. But in the shadow behind her perfect smile, Mi-yeon’s also suffering from the three sisters’ shared childhood trauma that they’ve yet to come to terms with.
Trina encounters another version of herself as a paramilitary fighter for the Tamil Tigers and begins to question the ways in which we rebel.
Actors Ahn So-yo and Kim Jae-rok return in director Albert Shin’s latest film as two anonymous strangers who meet in a motel room by the sea.
At a top-ranking educational institution like Lowell High School in San Francisco, seniors are emotionally exhausted as they prepare for the rigorous application process to get accepted to one of their dream Ivy League universities.
Four fearless emerging filmmakers embarked on a summer-long filmmaking journey online. We’re proud to present their world premiere here, in the landmark 10th edition of Reel Asian’s filmmaking program.
A fresh take on the Malaysian female monster Penanggalan, Chin is an overworked nurse at the maternity ward who finds joy when she is alone and can finally eat.
In the middle of a raging winter storm, 350 women from across Canada met in Winnipeg to attend the 1986 National Conference of Immigrant & Visible Minority Women to form a national organization representing the needs of two million Canadians.
Kea can’t make ends meet, even while working as a luau dancer, karaoke-bar hostess, and elementary school Hawaiian-language teacher. After a violent altercation with her boyfriend, Kea accidentally hits a homeless man with her car. Not wanting to involve the authorities, she decides to take care of the mysterious man herself.
watering is a semi-autobiographical short film through which the filmmaker reflects on the passing of their childhood dog, and how it continues to inform their navigation of daily life.
Fun and free, encounter a programming offering dedicated to celebrating creativity, wonder, and self-expression for audiences of all ages.
Filmmaker Christine Wu wayfinds her shifting relationship to Hong Kong, as someone who is now observing the region from afar.
Aishwarya Narayanan clashes with her coach father and questions the meaning of success while vying for a spot at the prestigious National Spelling Bee.
A young, queer, non-binary, Muslim storyteller walks us through the spaces and people that have shaped her healing and growth from some of the most trying moments in her past.
Set across three separate timelines, a couple struggle to openly love each other.
Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival is a unique showcase of contemporary Asian cinema and work from Asia and the Asian diaspora. Works include films and videos by artists in Canada, the U.S., Asia and all over the world. As Canada’s largest pan-Asian film festival, Reel Asian provides a public forum for Asian media artists and their work, and fuels the growing appreciation for Asian cinema in Canada.
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