Malaysia202184 minMalay, English, Chinese with English subtitlesNorth American PremiereDrama

Aman, a young aspiring writer, moved to Kuala Lumpur to follow his dreams, but all he has is his late father’s old car and nowhere to live. To make ends meet, he uses his room on wheels to illegally earn money through a driving-service app. This is how he meets Bella, a student from Penang. When Bella asks Aman to become her private driver for her night job in return for a place to stay, Aman agrees. 

The two lost souls form an unlikely solidarity in front of the beautiful yet stark black and white backdrop of Kuala Lumpur. Its unique imagery could be a reflection of how Aman sees the world as a colourblind person, but also a metaphor for his bleak and bittersweet reality as he struggles to find a place he can call home. Will things turn out for the better?

- June Kim

Canada202183 minArabic, French, English with English subtitlesDocumentary, Experimental, Women Filmmakers

Directed by Émilie Serri, Damascus Dreams is a reflexive documentary essay presented in a series of sections framed by voiceovers of Serri and her father. The film explores and interrogates the fraught notions of dreams, and memories of “home,” moving loosely through old video footage of the family home in Syria, interviews with Syrians who had to leave or flee because of the civil war, conversations between Serri and her father, and poetic, dreamlike sequences. Serri gathers these stories and memories to hold against her own questions about a homeland she does not have access to—and one her father cannot return to. 

To dream of home in Damascus Dreams is to grapple with grief. These collected reflections on yearning and loss become assemblage, a mingled presentation of impressions and emotions from a community with connections to a shared homeland, who express vastly different relationships to their experiences and memories. 

- Jasmine Gui

India202043 minHindi, English with English subtitlesNorth American PremiereDocumentary, Experimental, Women Filmmakers

A mysterious tiger walks through the forest, barely revealing itself, save for a few rare and magical glimpses. This allegorical fiction begins Pallavi Paul’s description of systemic police violence in Delhi, India, based on events suppressed from official history. Using scattered but historically significant fragments of documentation, including video and audio eyewitness accounts, Paul explores the intersections of power, gender, and the narrativization of memory. The film moves across moments like the national emergency of 1975–77, and the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984, all while remaining contemporary by alluding to recent police brutality across university campuses.

Creating a narrative from the memories and stories of collective power, resistance, and violence, Paul arrives at a coherent study of an abuse of power that is situated in Delhi, but that is easily recognizable almost anywhere in the world.

- Mariam Zaidi

USA202189 minEnglishDrama, Reel Asian Award Winner, Women Filmmakers

After being met with the destabilizing news of her parents’ divorce, Angie, a teenage, mixed-race Asian girl, reckons with her multiracial identity and sexual awakening in this quirky coming-of-age story. Her Asian-ness is called to question when her Chinese father begins dating a Chinese woman with a daughter who shares his culture and language. Angie’s feelings of inadequacy are met with her white-dominated surroundings in Galveston, Texas, fetishizing her mixed-race identity. 

Angie, an unpopular highschooler, secretly ignites a sexual relationship with Liam, an all-American popular high school boy. She questions her morality when she befriends Sheryl, Liam’s popular Instagram-influencer girlfriend. Inbetween Girl explores Angie’s journey of girlhood using a whimsical variety of animation and mixed-media to explore her teenage angst, looking at young love, race, desire and belonging. 

- Sarah Barzak

USA2021100 minEnglishDrama

PART OF THE CENTREPIECE SPOTLIGHT ON HAWAI'I

On the pastoral North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, the end is near for Masao, an ill and elderly man with regrets to spare. As he looks back, his family history, dreams, and mythology swirl around him as  ghosts he carries with him in his final days. Meanwhile, I Was A Simple Man shifts in time through pre-WWII country landscapes of days past, statehood, and a concrete-bound, contemporary Honolulu, mirroring 20th-century Hawaiian history. 

Following his atmospheric first feature, August at Akiko’s, and developed from his short film Obake (Ghosts), which showed at Reel Asian in 2012, with I Was A Simple Man, Christopher Makoto Yogi ambitiously continues to reach for the place between the seen and unseen, the feelings deeply felt but left unsaid, and to chart changes over time, all told with sublime imagery and sound, with a deep connection to the land, sea, and sky of his hometown in Hawaii. 

-  Aram Siu Wai Collier

USA202191 minEnglish Ontario PremiereComedy, Drama, Women Filmmakers

Monica (Sujata Day), a former spelling-bee champion, lives at home with her ailing mother and tutors young spelling-bee hopefuls whose parents hover around, in hopes that their children will follow in her footsteps. When she is offered a dream job in another city, she considers accepting it, until her estranged brother Sonny (Ritish Rajan) shows up unexpectedly, opening up old wounds and familial tensions. 

Day’s directorial debut is a comedy-drama that isn’t afraid to layer themes of intergenerational tensions, mental health stigma, and complicated sibling dynamics to create a touching portrait of a family trying to heal from a difficult past. Through the talents of an impressive cast of supporting actors, Day directs and simultaneously embodies an endearing and relatable image of a spirited millennial on a journey of acceptance and letting go, as she commits to a more meaningful relationship with her family, herself, and her own sense of freedom. 

- Mariam Zaidi

USA202077 minEnglish, Hawaiian with English Subtitles International PremiereDrama

PART OF THE CENTREPIECE SPOTLIGHT ON HAWAI'I

Kea can’t make ends meet, even while working as a luau dancer, karaoke-bar hostess, and elementary school Hawaiian-language teacher. After a violent altercation with her boyfriend, Kea accidentally hits a homeless man with her car. Not wanting to involve the authorities, she decides to take care of the mysterious man herself. But while she continues to struggle with her own financial hardship and difficulty finding housing, Kea’s downward spiral begins to reveal a deeply rooted trauma from her past. As her life careens out of control, so too does her grasp on the world around her.  

Christopher Kahunahana’s captivating storytelling ventures beyond the world-famous titular tourist destination and strikes an aesthetic that is perhaps unfamiliar to those with cursory knowledge of idyllic Hawaii. Kahunahana’s juxtaposition of the latter against the cold concrete of looming and perpetual urban development casts a critical look at the gentrified waste of ecological decay, systemic poverty, and the enduring legacy of U.S. colonization, which haunts the faces and spaces of Kahunahana’s film. Waikiki is a critical contribution to the growing body of Native Hawaiian cinema.   

-  Kevin Lim

France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Peru, South Korea, USA, Vietnam202177 minEnglish, various languages with English subtitles Animation, Documentary, Drama, Experimental, LGBTQ+ Filmmakers, Non-binary Filmmakers, Women Filmmakers

How does one trace lineages and map origins? Derailing form and convention, each of these films paves new pathways of understanding by reconceptualizing the relations between pasts, presents, and futures.

Canada, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, USA202181 minEnglish and various languages with English subtitles Animation, Drama, Family, Fantasy, LGBTQ+ Filmmakers, Non-binary Filmmakers, Women Filmmakers

Sing along to this collection of short films featuring characters who find themselves confronting systemic, structural, and personal challenges, all while defying conventional narratives and reconstructing alternative possibilities of storytelling.

Belgium, Cambodia, Canada, China, Philippines, South Korea, USA202176 minEnglish and various languages with English SubtitlesAnimation, Comedy, Documentary, Drama, Women Filmmakers

Recognizing the in/tangible ways feelings and relations can influence one’s actions, these six films tenderly hold the complexities of characters, places, and memories that are more than enough just as they are.