Join us for a special presentation of 18 to 35, a bold new workplace comedy created by Rahul Chaturvedi and executive produced by Andrew Phung.
For the 29th edition of Reel Asian, we’ve teamed up with a group of amazing local Toronto artists to create a collection of limited handmade merch, each piece designed with care, creativity, and a whole lot of love for our community. From one-of-a-kind trinkets to thoughtfully crafted keepsakes, these custom pieces celebrate the artistry and collaboration that make Reel Asian so special.
Join us at Sankofa Square on Mon, Oct 27 at 12PM as we announce our programming with four guest directors and hold an artist talk with this year's Festival Creative Artist, Janet Mac.
On a hot summer day in 1980s Taiwan, a teenage girl named Ming has her sexual awakening through celluloid fantasies, while drinking watermelon juice.
At a midnight highway rest area, weary travellers quietly relax their minds.
The discussion will explore how festivals can better support accessibility — from accommodating filmmakers with disabilities and reaching diverse audiences, to guiding creators on inclusive practices like budgeting for captioning.
Comprising over 2,000 hand-painted frames, ADORABLE presents a journey of a queer person, illustrating modern queer society, where discrimination, freedom, and love coexist.
On his return home, androgynous-looking Madhu attempts to seduce Ratnakar, his rickshaw driver, who is staying celibate in preparation for a religious pilgrimage.
After Bug’s ex-girlfriend June calls to pick up her stuff from their apartment, he makes his best attempt to win her back.
After Bug’s ex-girlfriend June calls to pick up her stuff from their apartment, he makes his best attempt to win her back.
Reel Asian and the Writers Guild of Canada present a candid conversation on the pathways and pitfalls of building a sustainable career in screenwriting.
A man's attempt at burglary goes wrong when he’s overpowered and captured by the apartment’s elderly owner. Things take a turn for the curiouser when it’s revealed there is a human-sized plaster cast in which the old man has encased his dead wife. To win his freedom, the burglar merely has to accompany the owner to the desert to bury him along with his wife.
Kana, a struggling visual artist, returns to Japan after years away in Vancouver to attend her beloved grandmother’s funeral. The familiar cadence of family dynamics endure and yet, everything feels different. While in Tokyo, Kana discovers her grandfather had a love of his life outside of his arranged marriage to her grandmother. Meanwhile, Kana reluctantly confronts her own messy romantic past with old flame Hiro to see if the embers of their love still flicker.
Shy, imaginative, eight-year-old Xuan struggles to find the perfect outfit for her school's Children's Day celebration while adjusting to a turbulent home life and an unlikely new friendship.
Caught in a struggle of love, legacy, and belief, a filmmaker undergoes a series of home remedies and spiritual rituals as their Southwest Chinese family seeks to rid their queer heir of what they perceive as an unwanted entity,
In Japan’s aging society, kodokushi — the lonely death of the elderly — has become disturbingly common. Divorced salaryman Yoji (Lily Franky) is confronted with this reality when he discovers his neighbour’s decomposing body.
We're welcoming back online screenings to the 29th edition of Reel Asian! This year, our virtual lineup brings the festival experience to your home with features and shorts. Grab your popcorn and enjoy cinema on your terms with flexible digital passes or individual feature tickets!
Hang out with us for Festival Happy Hour, open to the public! Grab a drink and join in on the casual activities each day.
The 29th edition of Reel Asian is about to unfold! Celebrate with us at Tha Phae Tavern!
Join us for a conversation with directors and filmmakers Mayumi Yoshida, Janus Victoria, Timothy Yeung, and Nach Dudsdeemaytha on the creative, logistical, and personal realities of co-producing films across borders. Each filmmaker brings a unique perspective on how shooting overseas shaped their debut features - from financing and creative collaboration to the evolution of personal and cultural perspective.
Finch and Midland, an intersection in Scarborough, is like many others in the suburbs of Canada's largest city. But every intersection has a story to tell.
Director's Note NARMADA: A VALLEY RISES launched my career as a documentary filmmaker — but more importantly, it was the film that transformed the way I see the world. Made against all odds, the film stands as a testament of endurance and persistence.
This immersive workshop will introduce the practice of traditional tai chi. Participants will experience its calm, flowing movements under the guidance of Mr. Zuo, a sixth-generation successor of traditional Yang-style tai chi.
She’s been cursed. Literally. And she needs $1,000 for the hex-breaking cure. AP embarks on a sex worker’s odyssey through pre-millenium Trashtown, U.S.A., where the grass is brown and the cops are kinky. Desperate for a life reset, AP embarks on a scooter-driven adventure with her always-and-forever-tethered ex-lover Danni.
Sisters Farrah, Miriam, and Layla gather for their monthly chai and hair removal. Meanwhile, their daughters Rina and Nora get embroiled in the whirlwind that comes with unfinished business for the suburbanite Iranian diaspora.
I’ve practised these words for 20 years now, but maybe being candid isn’t the best idea. I’m starting my countdown again — another 20 years. Maybe it will be the right time by then.
In the desolate countryside of Northwest China, our protagonist tries to kill a strange, human-faced cockroach, which has been taken by a passerby and revered as a god of the village.
Nehma belongs to the Oraon tribe and lives with her children on the outskirts of Jharkhand, India. Embroiled in a custody battle and a messy divorce, she secures a job at an AI data-labelling centre under the supervision of a stern manager. As we watch her navigate the steep learning curve of her new job and quickly confront the stark realities of biased data, the distortions in the very systems designed to help us become impossible to ignore.
Sam, a deviant artist and proud flower person, is spending one last day in a flower spa with his mother before his final performance act.
Sam, a deviant artist and proud flower person, is spending one last day in a flower spa with his mother before his final performance act.
In collaboration with the Independent Media Arts Alliance, Reel Ideas will co-host a three-day mini-conference focused on artist advocacy, fair pay, and building an equitable arts ecosystem.
This panel will explore how racialized and independent creators bring their films to communities and audiences.
K-pop? Yes, please. Demons? Sure! Hunters? OK, what? Here’s the story: Rumi, Zoey, and Mira are HUNTR/X, a world-renowned K-pop group who ALSO hunt demons to protect humans from the underworld. But one of them has a secret that could disrupt all they’ve worked for.
At her 65th birthday party, Karupy makes an unexpected announcement: She will be ending her own life that very night, sparking a whirlwind of emotions amongst her family. As she prepares for this final act, her party guests confront her about her decision.
After years of isolation in the hearing world, a mainstreamed Deaf adult learns sign language for the first time.
A chronically single young woman finds the courage to go on a first date with the help of some unusual friends.
Situated in a modest retail complex in Quetta, Pakistan, is a small photo studio plastered with framed images of clients posing with women they don't know, guns they don’t own, and motorcycles they’ve never ridden. “Make it look real” is the instruction given to the photo studio owner, Muhammad Sakhi, who earnestly captures his clients’ desires and ambitions through staged, saturated, and heavily doctored photographs.
Pride celebrations are coming up, and Manok, the feisty owner of a venerable lesbian bar in Seoul, is preparing for the annual party. Except the younger organizers want a new vibe, leaving Manok’s bar on the fringes. Irritated at her obsolescence, Manok closes the bar out of spite and moves back to her rural hometown with a fresh start on her mind. But is that possible in a town run by her ex-husband? If anybody can do it, Manok can.
One night, while Seolgi is lying on a grass field with friends, a shooting star falls and dark intrusive thoughts hit her, bursting with movement and blooming bright colours.
A mixed-race student meets the full Asian and full white versions of himself from parallel universes. Together, they must find a way to get back to their own realities.
Feng Xia, 53, lives a modest but decent life in Montreal: She has a house and is married with two children. But she finds herself growing dissatisfied with her loveless marriage and cloistered life of obligation. After taking a conversational French class, Feng Xia finds the city has opened up to her in new ways, including curious dalliances with dating apps. There, she meets Camille, a Quebecois woman who challenges her spiritually and sexually. Their affair awakens Feng Xia’s long-buried desires during a glowing Montreal summer.
In Gaspésie in rural Quebec, a quirky Chinese motel owner navigates his quiet routine between fixing rooms and casting lines into the sea — until his filmmaker son visits for a week.
Akam’s comfortable routine as a literature teacher in Oslo is disrupted by an uncle he’s never met, Khdr, who overstays his welcome on an unannounced visit from Iranian Kurdistan.
The director’s 81-year-old father — an ever-determined and resourceful gardener — attempts to grow the Sri Lankan winged bean in his suburban backyard garden in Markham, Ont.
Ordinary life repeats itself every day, but the sequence of events is never the same. Only the feeling of touching something can be recognized as “now."
A girl unexpectedly bumps into her childhood best friend and finds herself torn between rekindling their lost connection or letting the moment slip away forever.
Six-year-old Lily visits her grandmother post-masectomy in her pear garden, and is confused by grandma’s missing chest. At night, she discovers her grandmother’s shadow has her breasts, and Lily goes on a journey to get them back.
Explore the XR worldbuilding practices of media artists working at the confluence of body, space, and technology.
Render Me in Your Worlds is a multi-day symposium that highlights the Sari-Sari Xchange and Reel Asian's shared mission of amplifying Asian representation in the creative emerging media industries.
Rajas is a lonely teenage photographer who gawks at a circus freakshow — until he himself is transformed.
Cammie, a personified webcam that dreams of becoming a livestreamer, and Rat, an introverted rodent girl, are brought together on the digital self-help app, BetterHell. So unfolds this love story of two unlikely beings united by their fears of unrealized dreams and alienation.
From augmented reality projects reactivating rural Chinese areas to virtual reality works shaping collective memory, this roundtable opens a dialogue on how emerging media can tell local stories and convey lived experiences.
Wind down mid-festival with us at 401 Richmond’s lower lobby for a cozy Happy Hour Mini-Market in partnership with Pamplepuss. Shop our limited custom #ReelAsian29 collection, designed by local artists, and enjoy a few friendly rounds of mahjong with the community.
Reel Ideas presents a rich programme of conversations, panels, and networking sessions for filmmakers and artists at every stage of their careers.
Ever since astronaut-in-training Celeste was a child, Robot has served as a surrogate parent while her mother explored the galaxy. When Celeste starts a months-long mission after graduation, the pair must explore the unknowns of life without each other.
With pulsating neon-light animation, REVIVING THE ROOST is about community complexity and longing — an elegy to a lost space as much as it is director Vivek Shraya’s ode to a now-closed iconic Edmonton gay bar.
On a rainy afternoon, somewhere between innocence and awareness, three adolescent girls find themselves in the middle of a dance that takes on a life of its own.
Expecting another uneventful Jummah, Safa finds herself trapped with her overbearing family and an angry ex.
Celebrate the launch of the Sari-Sari Xchange Assetory, a storytelling-led virtual asset library prototype created with and for the Asian diaspora, and play with mobile resource units designed to facilitate the making and exhibition of XR creative works.
This workshop spotlights the Sari-Sari Xchange Assetory, a storytelling-led virtual asset library prototype created with and for the Asian diaspora. Participants will be asked to bring an object with a personal meaning, which they will learn how to scan and create a 3D reproduction of. They will also be able to share what memories, stories, and histories the object holds and contribute to the SSX Assetory if they wish.
Hand-processed, solarized, tinted, and toned, Serene Hues is a meditative journey into the tranquility and vibrant beauty of nature.
Join us for the closing event of the 29th Reel Asian, "So You Think You Can Pitch" Live Finale. Five emerging filmmaking teams will compete for a prize package to help realize their short films.
Ever since astronaut-in-training Celeste was a child, Robot has served as a surrogate parent while her mother explored the galaxy. When Celeste starts a months-long mission after graduation, the pair must explore the unknowns of life without each other.
Join us for an in-depth conversation about SPACE CADET, a moving animated film that speaks volumes without a single word of dialogue. Director Kid Koala will share how a memory of watching Charlie Chaplin films with his grandmother became the north star that guided this deeply personal story.
An exploration of past choices and the enduring burden of regret expressed through drums and dance, where movement echoes memory and the weight we must carry.
Sixteen-year-old Lolo becomes entangled in a Freudian loop centered on a strawberry shortcake and her mother, Norma. As Lolo sinks into the loop, the boundary between reality and the dreamscape becomes increasingly blurred.
Merging reality and staging scenes to develop settings of fantasy where subjects play, each person explores the longing for one’s softness and roughness, and what it means to hold both at the same time.
After a Chinese medicine practitioner is brutalized by police at a recent protest, his community comes together in quiet acts of healing.
Joey, a Filipino Canadian fashionista, enters the world of professional wrestling and faces the hardships of getting his “green light."
Set in 2005, a driven high school student obsessively studies Spanish all year so she can test up a level into her crush’s class.
With only one night in Tokyo, Tammy, a grieving Japanese Canadian woman, is haunted by her doppelganger.
Filmmaker Ian Tuason’s debut feature The Undertone, recently acquired by A24, transforms the intimacy of caregiving and the eerie power of audio into a chilling, single-location horror story.
In THERE ARE NO WORDS, award-winning filmmaker Min Sook Lee searches for stories of her mother, Song Ji Lee, who died by suicide when Lee was just 12 years old. Through an intimate archive, Lee confronts public, private, and imagined histories in the wake of trauma while negotiating her relationship with her aging father, who met her mother while serving in the Korean Counterintelligence Corps under dictator Park Chung Hee in 1960s Korea.
Haunted by rising sea levels, a daughter digs up her father’s grave to move his body to higher ground.
Robert A. Nakamura a.k.a. Bob is a legend of Asian American media as an educator, activist, and filmmaker. His frequent collaborator, Tadashi Nakamura, or Tad, has always known he wanted to make a film about his dad’s life. But when Bob is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, the urgency to make the film becomes more pronounced.
Reuniting with the cast of her highly acclaimed 2017 festival hit, Village Rockstars, Rima Das returns with a standalone sequel centering Dhunu, now a teenager, who lives in a small village in Assam, India, and dreams of becoming a musician. While Dhunu and her friends navigate the vulnerable transition between childhood and adulthood, weighing new responsibilities and priorities, the elders around them face harsher circumstances brought on by predatory land developers and climate change, affecting their livelihoods and sense of community.
Haunted by nightmares while caring for his sick mother, Yoon Seok meets Soo In as she's dragging a huge rock across the beach. Intrigued, he learns how she escaped her worst imaginations.
Jelson and Ipe, two students deep in love, undergo trials of mind and body as they prepare to survive a world devastated by climate change.
Hoa Thi Le and Hue Nguyen Che flee the Vietnam War by boat and become background extras in 1979's Apocalypse Now. Written by their daughter, Cathy Linh Che, this story explores the interplay between fact and fiction.
Newly orphaned and freshly wounded from a loss, a boy lends his companion a prosthetic arm for the day. This is a slow and meditative film about everyday gestures of love, communicated through our universal understanding of body language.
A discussion on artist labour conditions and funding challenges. The IMAA team will present on the Alliance’s resources including the Fee Schedule, the Resource Access Network and the Advocacy Toolkit, followed by a reception and mingling portion. Attendees will have the opportunity to connect with the Alliance team, industry leaders, artists, and peers. Free and open to the public!
Naim starts to notice unsettling changes in his wife’s behaviour and increasing visits from his best friend, Javed. He and his son Talha quietly navigate their suspicions and the complexities of their family relationships.
How far would you go to uncover a family history that has been purposefully buried? What are the consequences of resurfacing these stories to fulfil your own? In an extremely candid documentary, filmmaker Tony Nguyen embarks on a scrappy investigation to reconnect to his father, who was estranged from his family due to the Vietnam War.
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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