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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hand-processed, solarized, tinted, and toned, Serene Hues is a meditative journey into the tranquility and vibrant beauty of nature.
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.
Haunted by rising sea levels, a daughter digs up her father’s grave to move his body to higher ground.
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.
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.
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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