Wee Asian is free and drop-in. Screenings take place at 10AM and 1:00 PM.
No tickets required!
Canada, Taiwan, U.K., USA2023-2024TRT: 49 minVarious languages
Loud and expressive, reflexive yet playful, this programme, in the spirit of Creatura, makes room for all our mushy and monstruous emotions. Come for the screening, stick around for the delightful arts activities for all ages to enjoy together!
For: family gatherings; those seeking a relaxed screening; reruns; hands-on
USA202311 MinEnglishAction, Available Online, Directed By Women, Family-friendly, Science Fiction
Tessie, a 13-year-old science prodigy, journeys into her grandma's deteriorating mind to save one precious memory they have together.
IN PERSON: This film is scheduled to be presented fully captioned (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated)
ONLINE: This film is scheduled to be presented with subtitles for all spoken dialogue (no sound cues indicated)
Grace Hanna
Grace Hanna is a Filipino American filmmaker. Their film, Halcyon Days, is sponsored by Film Independent and received Panavision’s NFP Grant. Their short, Lola, won the Directorial Debut Award at Indy Shorts.
USA20245 MinMarathi2slgbtq+, Animation, Available Online, Directed By Women, Family-friendly, First Films, Music, Romance
This Bollywood-inspired hybrid animated music video features Aadarshini, an anxious Indian American girl who feels out of place at an Indian wedding, until she learns to make space for herself in her culture through Parvati, a traditional dancer who catches her eye.
IN PERSON & ONLINE: No dialogue (No audio + visual descriptions)
Nimisha Mahatme
Nimisha Mahatme is a Bay Area visual development artist working in film and television. She enjoys creating characters and worlds! She loves having characters that range from different diversities, cultures, and sexualities.
USA20237 MinNo DialogueAnimation, Available Online, Directed By Women, Family-friendly
A little girl shoots down from the heavens to spend her birthday with her family.
IN PERSON & ONLINE: this film is scheduled to be presented with no dialogue (No audio + visual descriptions)
Mitra Shahidi Malus
Mitra Shahidi is an award-winning Iranian American story artist, director, and screenwriter, born and raised in Istanbul. She currently works for Pixar and lives in the Bay Area.
South Korea20234 MinNo DialogueAnimation, Available Online, Directed By Women, Family-friendly
A young girl's birthday overlaps a memorial service, and she struggles to blow out her candles while avoiding adults who prioritize rituals over birthday celebrations.
IN PERSON & ONLINE: No dialogue (no audio + visual descriptions)
Kim Jungsoo
Kim Jungsoo is an animator based in Seoul. Her filmography includes Insomnia (2017) and Dear. J (2021).
Canada20235 MinNo Dialogue2slgbtq+, Animation, Available Online, Experimental, Family-friendly, Horror, Science Fiction
Gaze into a wondrous abyss. But what happens when you look at something too hard for too long?
IN PERSON: This film is scheduled to be presented fully captioned (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated)
ONLINE: No Dialogue
Constant Yen
Constant Yen is a Toronto-based artist and animator. Their practice involves creating spontaneous and playful experimental work combining analog and digital mediums.
Canada20242 MinNo DialogueAnimation, Available Online, Directed By Women, Family-friendly
For people living with structural dissociation, falling asleep can be a challenge, as multiple contradictory thoughts conspire to keep them awake. Director Michelle Ku draws on her experience with somatic healing to put these thoughts to rest, in a few vivid minutes of hand-painted animation.
IN PERSON: This film is scheduled to be presented fully captioned (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated)
ONLINE: No dialogue (no audio + visual descriptions)
Michelle Ku
Michelle Ku is a visual artist and animation filmmaker living in Mohkinstsis/Calgary. Mainly working with acrylic paint and traditional materials, Ku explores her personal healing journey, the mind-body-spirit connection, and childhood memories.
Taiwan, UK20234 MinEnglishAnimation, Available Online, Directed By Women
A poetic narrative and self-portrait through experimentation in 2D animation, stop-motion and sound, this short film delves into a self-searching and healing journey, exploring the relationship between emotion and space.
IN PERSON: This film is scheduled to be presented fully captioned (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated)
ONLINE: This film is scheduled to be presented fully captioned (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated)
Chu-Chieh Lee
Chu-Chieh Lee is a Taiwanese animation director and illustrator based in London, U.K. She finished her master’s in narrative animation at the Royal College of Art. Her clients include LinkedIn, Google, Nestlé, and BBC.
Canada202411 MinNo DialogueAnimation, Available Online, Directed By Women, Family-friendly
A road trip traces a transition from grief to acceptance, through valleys, junctions, and detours. Detours Ahead reflects the director's meditation on solitude, and articulates her shifting relationship with place.
IN PERSON & ONLINE: No dialogue (audio + visual descriptions)
Esther Cheung
Esther Cheung is a filmmaker and director from Toronto. She is known for her poetic approach to story and is inspired by her relationship with place. Currently based in Vancouver, she is working on the animated feature Tangles.
23 Nov, 2024 10:00 am
to 23 Nov, 2024 3:00 pm
Innis Town HallWee Asian is free and drop-in. Screenings take place at 10AM and 1:00 PM.
No tickets required!
Wee Asian short films and digital colouring pages are available online with a FREE Wee Asian Pass. Valid from 10AM on Monday, Nov 18 thru 11:59PM on Sunday, Nov 24, 2024.
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This programme is presented with a mix of open captions, English subtitles, and no captions. Wheelchair spaces and step-free seating is available for this screening – click below to book accessible seats.
Cozy up in the cinema with these two read-along sessions by two local authors!
A fun and touching debut that explores the power of finding your voice.
Rudābeh (Rudy for short) loves to talk, sing, jump and shout. There’s just one problem: the adults in her life are always telling her that she is SO LOUD. When her grandmother (Māmān Bozorg) visits from Iran for the first time, Rudy worries that she might be too loud for her. But as she tries to be quieter, Rudy starts to feel less and less like herself. Listening closely to the many sounds in her world—from husky howls and streetcar chimes to Māmān Bozorg’s roaring sneezes—Rudy tries to figure out the full range of her own voice, discovering along the way the joy in being loud.
Post-reading, stick around for a fun creative workshop with author Sahar Golshan!
11:30AM–12:30PM
Sahar Golshan
Sahar Golshan is the author of So Loud! a picture book published in 2024 with Annick Press. So Loud! is illustrated by Shiva Delsooz. Sahar is a writer, a language learner, and the director of the short documentary KAR (2019). She is a winner of the Marina Nemat Award for Creative Writing in Non-Fiction and the Air Canada Short Film Award. Her writing has appeared in Room, Taclanese, Shameless, The Ex-Puritan, and Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language. She has enjoyed teaching and facilitating workshops in academic and community spaces like the University of Toronto, the University of Guelph, and the Toronto Public Library.
“Wherever he goes, Rain Boy brings wet—which means he’s not very popular. Sun Kidd brings sunshine everywhere she goes, so everyone loves her. Only Sun Kidd sees what’s special about Rain Boy. But when she invites him to her birthday party, disaster strikes, and Rain Boy storms. Now the world is nothing but rain. Will the other kids ever love Rain Boy for being himself? And. more importantly, can Rain Boy learn to love his rain?
3–3:30PM
Dylan Glynn
Dylan Glynn is a painter, author and animator based out of Toronto, Canada. His multidisciplinary practice which includes a broad selection of traditional media (watercolour, oils, pen and ink, collage), 2d cel-animation, and Photoshop is unified by Glynn’s signature application which they describe as “one-shot, first-thought best-thought, perfectly imperfect”. The immediacy of Glynn’s work also lends itself to a sense of naivety as seen in their debut picture book Rain Boy, released in the spring of 2020 by Chronicle Books.
From 12-4pm, participate in a range of delightful arts activities on a drop-in basis!
Come and meet your new companion, Beanie Munster. Together, you can customize, accessorize, and discover its full characteristics and backstory!
12–4PM Drop-In
Boris Yu
Boris Yu is an ENTP-T Debater (last checked 2022) who straddles the realms of art and design imagining speculative futures related to space, emotions, and systems. He’s learning to approach the eddies in his day to day as moments to build stillness within the chaotic pressures of our current culture.
Colour in your own troupe of fantastical creatures in mid-flight, dreamed up by artist Wenting Li as part of the RA:X Creatura installation. Transform them into keychains so that they may fly with you home and wherever else you journey to.
12–4PM Drop-In
Wenting Li
Wenting Li is an artist and illustrator born in Sichuan, China, and living in Tkaronto/Toronto. Working across multiple mediums including installation, print + digital publications, drawing and painting, comics and murals, Li is currently thinking about communally possible futures, everyday routines, scifi and fantasy, specificity within the telling of stories, and leaving the door open to creatures.
Add fragments of your memory and stories of Reel Asian along with your personal archives into this year's festival creative IMAGE LULLABY
12–4PM Drop-In
Agnes Wong
Agnes Wong is a multidisciplinary designer, artist, and curator based in Tkaronto/Toronto and Hong Kong. Through an experimental approach, Agnes’ creative practice seeks to integrate themes of displacement, fragmentation, and temporality together in an interdisciplinary blend of digital and moving image, photography, graphic design, text, and print matter. She holds a BFA (Honours with Distinction) in Publications from OCAD University (2023) and has completed her propaedeutic studies at Design Academy Eindhoven, Netherlands. She is also the founder of Forever Gift Shop.
Courtesy of The Beguiling and Annick Press, discover a new world or meet your next favourite author from this selection of books!
12–4PM Drop In
Animator Akash shows you that getting a start in animation is as easy as using LEGO and things at home that will help you learn fundamentals and understand stop-motion.
ONLINE
Akash Jones
Akash Jones is an emerging director/animator whose work tells stories true to his culture and brings worlds to life. A TMU graduate currently making his mark in the industry.
After a mysterious encounter leaves her daughter Sumi in a coma, Sara rushes from South Korea to Winnipeg to be by her side. As Sumi heals, Sara begins to unpack details of her life that her daughter never shared with her. On a mission to find a husband to take care of Sumi when she wakes, Sara ventures into the daunting unknowns of dating apps and Winnipeg winters, and finds out more about herself than she planned.
16 Nov. 2:30 pm
Six emerging filmmakers embarked on a summer-long filmmaking journey. We’re proud to present their world premiere here, in the 13th edition of Reel Asian’s filmmaking program.
16 Nov. 2:30 pm
It’s the holidays, and Ben Santhanaraj shows up to Sri Lanka to see Suzanne Hopper, his long-distance partner who works there. Unfortunately, Suzanne’s been informed she now has to work through the holidays, thwarting their dream vacation plans (and his amorous intentions). They decide to go along with their itinerary, her laptop in tow, but nothing seems to work out as planned, leading to candid conversations and chaotic twists. Will their relationship endure — or have they grown too far apart?
15 Nov. 5:30 pm
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.
401 Richmond Street West, The Commons (Suite 448)
Toronto, Ontario, M5V 3A8 Canada
(416) 703 – 9333
info@reelasian.com
Charitable number: 870021383RR0001
