The winner of the Reel Asian Audience Award—Feature is selected through a tally of votes from the viewers of the 26th edition Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival.
$2,500 cash prize
The winner of the Reel Asian Audience Award—Short is selected through a tally of votes from the viewers of the 26th edition Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival.
$500 cash prize
All feature films are eligible for this award:
$2,000 cash prize
All Canadian feature films are eligible for this prize.
$1,000 cash prize
All first feature films are eligible for this prize.
$500 cash prize and CineSend Files Team Annual Plan (valued at $4,500)
All short works made by emerging Canadian artists (fewer than 4 films) are eligible for this prize of post-production services
$5,000 value
All Canadian short films and videos are eligible for this prize. Opportunity to broadcast on Air Canada’s in-flight entertainment screens.
$2,000 cash prize
All animated works are eligible for this award.
$600 cash prize
All documentary works are eligible for this award. Sponsored by Karla Bobadilla, Victoria Shen, Immanuel Lanzaderas, Diang Iu, and Sonia Sakamoto-Jog.
$1,500 cash prize
All films made by female-identified or non-binary Ontario-based artists are eligible for this award.
$1,000 cash prize, $500 in programming gift certificates, and 2 one-year memberships to WIFT Toronto
All Canadian short filmmakers over the age of 40 with less than 2 writer/director credits (film OR television) in the last 5 years are eligible for this award.
$2,500 cash prize
The award recipient will receive full class tuition coverage of a class at Armstrong Acting Studios.
$2,250 value
The award recipient will receive full class tuition coverage of a class at Armstrong Acting Studios.
$2,250 value
Lainey Lui
ETALK senior correspondent, co-host of The Social and scribe of the immensely popular celebrity gossip blog, LaineyGossip.com, Lui does what she does for one reason – to provide a gossip education to the Canadian public.
The Toronto-born, self-proclaimed gossip maven trailblazed her own way into the gossip game. What started as an email to two friends grew to a website with millions of readers from around the world. As friends told friends about Lui’s non-sycophantic email updates, she received so many requests to get on her mailing list that her server crashed.
More than one million readers and Twitter followers read LaineyGossip.com every month and listen to her two in-house podcasts, making it a leading international celebrity and pop culture source. Recognizing Lui’s talent, she joined the ETALK team in 2006.
Ada Tseng
Ada Tseng is an assistant editor on the utility journalism team at the Los Angeles Times. The team publishes stories and information that help people solve problems, answer questions and make big decisions about life in and around Los Angeles. She previously led coverage of Orange County as TimesOC’s entertainment editor, and she co-hosts the Asian American pop-culture history podcast Saturday School.
Sami Khan
Sami Khan is an Oscar-nominated writer and director whose work has been supported by the Sundance and Tribeca film institutes, Rooftop Films, the Gotham, the Berlinale, and the NBCUniversal’s Directors Fellowship. His films have screened at leading festivals, including Tribeca, Toronto, Hot Docs, and Mumbai. Khan’s latest release is “Guha,” an episode he directed for the Emmy-nominated Apple TV+ docuseries HOME.
Aashna Thakkar
Aashna Thakkar is a Toronto-based artist, writer, and film programmer. She is currently the manager of programming at the Regent Park Film Festival and has previously worked with Breakthroughs Film Festival and Hot Docs. Thakkar was a writer in the 2020–2021 cohort of TACLA Youth Critics Initiative. She has previously sat on juries for the Winnipeg Film Group and aluCine Latin Film + Media Arts Festival.
Micah Kernan
Micah Kernan is the development manager for both drama and comedy at CBC, where she coordinates the management, tracking, and distribution of projects. She is also the current programmer for Canada’s longest- running short-film showcase, Canadian Reflections.
Kim Sun-woo
Kim Sun-woo has produced short films in Korea for 10 years, and currently works as a programmer at the Cheongju International Short Film Festival. He has also programmed for the Chungbuk International Martial Arts & Action Film Festival for the past three years.
Chris Chong Chan Fui
Chris Chong Chan Fui works with varying materials that connect early cinema, natural science, sports, and economics. Chong’s films have premiered at the Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, Vienna, BFI London, and have won TIFF’s Best Canadian Short Film two years in a row. He is a Smithsonian Institute fellow, a Ford Foundation fellow, and most recently, he was awarded the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Arts Fellowship in Italy.
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 and Asian diasporic artists and storytellers. 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
Charitable number: 870021383RR0001
