Cambodia202224 minutesKhmer and Bunong with English subtitlesDrama

Indigenous Bunong siblings spend one last day in their rural village in northeastern Cambodia, before an impending move to the capital city in search of a more prosperous life.

ACCESSIBILITY

This film is presented with open English subtitles in-person and digitally.

RATING

RATED PG

Directors Bio

Polen Ly

Polen Ly paused his studies in medicine to pursue filmmaking in 2012. He has directed several shorts and documentaries, exploring environmental and human rights issues, including LGBTQ+ and Indigenous experiences.

USA2022102 minutesEnglishToronto PremiereDocumentary

How do you love a place that doesn’t seem to love you back Director David Siev broaches that question in Bad Axe, a complicated love letter to his hometown. Siev’s dad, a survivor of the Cambodian Killing Fields, has spent decades building a new life in Bad Axe, but the city is not always hospitable to immigrants. Siev’s sister’s outspoken support for Black Lives Matter puts her at odds with her family restaurant’s most loyal, Trump-supporting customers. Unfolding across the turbulent year of 2020, this personal documentary follows Siev’s family as they struggle to keep their restaurant afloat amid family tensions, neo-Nazis, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

At times, the film is an unsettling portrait of racism’s existence in our everyday lives, but it equally insists on being about family and community. In his feature-documentary debut, Siev gives us an intimate account of a family in troubled times, fraught with uncertainty, yet held by a bond as deep as roots go.

– Ron Ma

USA202282 minutesEnglish, Arabic with English subtitlesToronto PremiereDocumentary, Women Filmmakers

Following three Muslim women activists who have come of age since 9/11, An Act of Worship is a unique glimpse into the lives of a new generation of American Muslims deeply impacted by over 40 years of history that has shaped their lives and trajectories in powerful and irreversible ways.

Aber is a community organizer leading a sanctuary city initiative in New York. Khadega is finding her way while advocating for her community in Michigan. Ameena is a civil-rights lawyer in California navigating motherhood while fighting for change. Interwoven with their stories is a historical timeline skilfully combined with home movies to create a deeply moving and meaningful tapestry of shared trauma, culture, joy, and resistance. An Act of Worship is an emotional portrait about a community that has undergone enormous change, but one that is taking control of their narrative on a path towards power and defiance against further marginalization. 

- Mariam Zaidi

Singapore202171 minutesEnglish, Malay, Cantonese, Hokkien with English subtitles North American PremiereDocumentary, LGBTQ+ Filmmakers, Women Filmmakers

In this reflective documentary, director Quen Wong turns the lens toward the intimate and vulnerable in her own life as a trans woman in Singapore, making time and space to honour acts of looking and being seen, moments of being fearful and working to communicate, and reflecting on past decisions in order to make new ones. Though gentle and quiet, these gestures are powerfully earnest, and refreshingly honest.

Against the context of a conservative nation-state, Some Women also uses dialogue and gathering to address a fuller spectrum of queer life on the island, threading Wong own story with recollections and perspectives from other generations of trans women, through the accompaniment of Sanisa and Lune Loh. These moments in the film archive and celebrate trans and queer folks’ evolving strategies for survival, protest, celebration, and continuance. Through Some Women, Wong practices vulnerability so as to request it from others, and celebrates herself so she can celebrate others. The lens is up close and personal, enmeshed fully in the act of bearing witness.

- Jasmine Gui

Canada, French Polynesia202212 minutesEnglish and French with English subtitlesAnimation, Dance, Drama

A Tahitian dancer tries to reclaim her identity by confronting a tourist audience with a dance of her own.

ACCESSIBILITY

This film is presented with open captions in-person and closed captions digitally.

RATING

RATED PG

Content Warning: Sexist situations

Directors Bio

Wei Li

Wei Li is an Emmy-winning storyboard and comic artist. His work includes Netflix’s Carmen Sandiego, Cleopatra in Space, and Blue Eye Samurai. Tehura is his debut film.

Canada202289 minutesEnglishToronto PremiereDrama, Romance, Women Filmmakers

When reserved, late-bloomer Grace gets passed up for a major promotion at work, she tries to break out of her shell by pursuing a one-night stand at the club. Her choice in partner, Carter Stone, an NHL player at a crossroads, is having an equally rough night. After an initial meet-cute and disastrous attempt at a hookup, the two walk Toronto’s wintry streets, wandering from bar to skating rink to office, slowly but surely finding common ground as the night progresses.

Kim’s Convenience’s Andrea Bang shines in a dramatic role as rigid Grace, whose acerbic stubbornness adds a bumbling comedy, as she learns where she can bend without breaking. The feature debut of veteran Canadian TV writer and director Renuka Jeyapalan, Stay The Night showcases delightfully familiar locals-only Toronto hangouts, while asking us to lose ourselves in a version of the city where a brief encounter doesn’t have to mean a transaction.

– Vidhya Elango

USA2022105 minutesEnglish, Punjabi, Spanish with English subtitlesToronto PremiereDrama, Family

Kiran, a first-generation Punjabi truck driver, is about to become a father, but he is preoccupied by questions and reflections on family, fatherhood, and responsibility. He embarks on one last work trip to clear his head, but what starts as a peaceful, meditative journey shifts abruptly when he hears pounding inside a shipping container and discovers an undocumented girl named Elena inside. After much convincing, he agrees to set out on a cross-country road trip in search of her family, as the pair bond over music, culturally specific food, and what it means to be seen as “other” in white America.

Nardeep Khurmi skillfully directs and performs in an impressive feature debut to create a profoundly poignant and timely look at solidarity, difference, and found family, while asking us to contemplate the bonds we create with strangers and the memories and traumas that both haunt us and shape us into who we are.

- Mariam Zaidi

Cambodia, Canada, French Polynesia, Singapore, USA202275 minutesEnglish and other languages with English subtitlesAnimation, Drama, Family, Women Filmmakers

How do our bodies and environments absorb and hold onto repetitive patterns, habits, and routines? This presentation of shorts exercises the capacity to confront harmful structures, encourage reflexivity, and affirm the embodied knowledge we carry.

Canada, Sri Lanka, UK202167 minutesTamil, Urdu, English with English subtitlesDocumentary, Experimental, LGBTQ+ Filmmakers

If From Every Tongue It Drips is a documentary constructed between three locations that follows Ponni, who writes a form of 19th-century queer Urdu poetry called Rekhti, and her lover Sarala, a camera operator. As their personal lives unfold on camera, the lines between rehearsal and reality, location and distance, and self and other seem to dissipate. The couple’s conversations are interwoven with the director’s own reflections, connecting dots from each of their specific experiences and reference points.

By choosing to look at the personal and political through the framework of quantum physics, director Sharlene Bamboat draws connections between British colonialism and Indian nationalism, tracing the impact these distinct histories and realities have on queer art, politics, poetry, dance, and music. From landmark pieces of music and poetry composed by revolutionary figures to more contemporary works, the film shows us the politicization of South Asian pop culture and the possibilities of its reclamation.

- Mariam Zaidi

Taiwan202298 minutesOriginal Mandarin version with Chinese and English subtitlesCanadian PremiereRomance

In this oddly sweet and gentle story, Hong, a shy young man, opens his eyes to love when he coincidentally meets Lele, the mistress of a sex worker business. 

After a disastrous blind date set up by his mother, Hong is dragged to Lele’s hotel by his cousin. Not yet ready to lose his virginity to one of Lele’s girls, Hong finds himself strangely attracted to the older woman instead. This comes as a revelation for Hong, who has been under the thumb of his mother Meiling all of his life, and has never acted out of his own will. Little does Meiling know that the spark in Hong’s heart for this older, experienced, and unapproved woman will truly mark the beginning of Hong’s growth into adulthood.

Two multi-talented singer-actor heartthrobs from different generations, Kai Ko and Vivian Hsu, play the awkward yet warm couple who find comfort in each other. After a break of almost 10 years since Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, Mama Boy is a welcomed return for Arvin Chen that will bewilder you with its magical colour palettes and characters that grow in you as well as on the screen.

- June Kim