Canada202677 minArabic, English, Farsi, Spanish with English Subtitles Toronto Premiere
In a striking finale to her documentary essay trilogy, director Sanaz Sohrabi continues her exploration of resource extraction across Iran and West Asia with An Incomplete Calendar. Using a remarkable wealth of archival material seamlessly woven into a creative, scrapbook-style tapestry, the film centres on a rare and surprising artifact: the vinyl record of Rhymes and Songs for OPEC, or the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, recorded by the Concert Choir of the Central University of Venezuela to commemorate OPEC's 20th anniversary.
Interweaving rarely seen news clippings, expert testimony, and her own astute narrative voice, Sohrabi masterfully unpacks a complex history with gripping accessibility. Contrasting nations that viewed oil strictly as a market commodity against those that sought to use it as political leverage for Palestinian liberation struggles and pan-Arab solidarity movements, An Incomplete Calendar is told with singular creative vision, standing as a timeless record of seismic political shifts and providing an essential historical blueprint to understanding the fractured geopolitics of our world today.
– Mariam Zaidi
Jihan El-Tahri
Murtaza Vali
Laleh Khalili
Layla Maghribi
OFFICIAL SELECTION
Cinéma du Réel, 2026
Vancouver International Film Festival, 2026
AWARDS
First Film Loridan-Ivens Award & GNCR – Young Jury Award,
Cinéma du Réel International Documentary Film Festival, 2026
Best Feature Film–International Competition,
Olhar de Cinema – Curitiba International Film Festival, 2026
International Jury Award Winner,
Pesaro International Film Festival, 2026
Sanaz Sohrabi
Sanaz Sohrabi is a visual culture researcher and an artist-filmmaker based in Montreal, working on visual histories of resource sovereignty and post-colonial ecologies from the Global South. Her films and installations have been shown and awarded in various festivals and biennials including Berlinale, International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts, and the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art.
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14 Nov. 10:00 am
Bryce and Mei Lee make home movies with a video camera, at their uncle's Chinese Restaurant in Vancouver island to pass the time. Bryce wants to level up, make some new friends, and get super popular through filmmaking. The quickest way to do that? Tell everyone he knows Bruce Lee.
14 Nov. 6:00 pm
Ashley Duong’s BA'S BOOK, Reel Asian’s opening night film, begins with her father’s memoir and unfolds with the process of recreating her family’s history of war, displacement, and migration from Vietnam.
12 Nov. 2:00 pm
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.
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