Canada202513 minEnglish2slgbtq+, Available Online, Documentary, Experimental, Queer

Merging reality and staging scenes to develop settings of fantasy where subjects play, each person explores the longing for one’s softness and roughness, and what it means to hold both at the same time.

IN PERSON & ONLINE: This film is scheduled to be presented fully captioned (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated).

Directors Bio

*Emma Zuck

Emma Zuck is a filmmaker and writer exploring the in-betweens. She sees poetry all around her and hopes to nurture community both on set and in theatres.

Canada202518 minEnglishAction + Adventure, Available Online, Documentary, Sports

Joey, a Filipino Canadian fashionista, enters the world of professional wrestling and faces the hardships of getting his “green light."

IN PERSON & ONLINE: This film is being presented with English subtitles for all spoken dialogue (no sound cues indicated).

Directors Bio

*Mateo Jose Ignacio

Mateo Jose Ignacio is a Toronto-based Filipino filmmaker passionate about storytelling. Through his work, he loves sharing the warmth and vibrancy of the culture that shaped him.

USA202515 minVietnamese with English subtitlesAvailable Online, Documentary, History

Hoa Thi Le and Hue Nguyen Che flee the Vietnam War by boat and become background extras in 1979's Apocalypse Now. Written by their daughter, Cathy Linh Che, this story explores the interplay between fact and fiction.

IN PERSON & ONLINE: This film is scheduled to be presented fully captioned (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated).

Directors Bio

Christopher Radcliff

Christopher Radcliff is an award-winning filmmaker whose work has screened worldwide and online via Criterion, Short of the Week, and Lé Cinema Club.

Canada20254 minEnglishAnimation, Available Online, Directed By Women, Documentary, Experimental, Family-friendly

The director’s 81-year-old father — an ever-determined and resourceful gardener — attempts to grow the Sri Lankan winged bean in his suburban backyard garden in Markham, Ont.

IN PERSON & ONLINE: This film is scheduled to be presented fully captioned (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated).

Directors Bio

*Champika Fernando

Champika Fernando is a Sri Lankan Canadian filmmaker whose work explores magic in the everyday. They are especially interested in telling deeply personal stories through approaches that are technically accessible.

USA202598 minEnglish, Vietnamese with English subtitlesCanadian PremiereDocumentary, First Feature

How far would you go to uncover a family history that has been purposefully buried? What are the consequences of resurfacing these stories to fulfil your own?

In an extremely candid documentary, filmmaker Tony Nguyen embarks on a scrappy investigation to reconnect to his father, who was estranged from his family due to the Vietnam War. Challenging family members who don’t want to disturb the dust, Nguyen is determined to find the potential truth, and the value of it. Nguyen’s film is a rollercoaster ride of DIY detective work to uncover family secrets, ultimately questioning the role and power of a filmmaker.

On the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, YEAR OF THE CAT offers a sincere look at piecing together a family story post war, offering a personal reflection of how displacement and trauma gets passed down to a generation who are now parents.

– Khanh Tudo

Directors Bio

Tony Nguyen

Tony Nguyen is an Oakland, Calif.-based filmmaker whose work explores the Vietnamese refugee experience (Enforcing the Silence, Giap’s Last Day at the Ironing Board Factory) and the overlooked stories of individuals and communities that make up the fabric of the town (Fresh Frozen, I See Me).

Canada202599 minEnglish, KoreanDirected By Women, Documentary

In There Are No Words, award-winning filmmaker Min Sook Lee searches for stories of her mother, Song Ji Lee, who died by suicide when Lee was just 12 years old. Through an intimate archive, Lee confronts public, private, and imagined histories in the wake of trauma while negotiating her relationship with her aging father, who met her mother while serving in the Korean Counterintelligence Corps under dictator Park Chung Hee in 1960s Korea. Despite being an unreliable narrator, Lee’s father is her last direct tie to her mother.

Lee turns the camera on herself to trace her experiences from Toronto to her birthplace in South Korea's Hwasun County and back, documenting tender efforts to speak her mother into collective memory. There Are No Words is a brave meditation on grief, loss, memory, and longing, reminding us that even when language fails us, there is still so much to say.

– Jasmine Gui

China, Germany, USA202523 minSichuan Chinese with English subtitlesDocumentary, Gay, Non-binary, Queer

Caught in a struggle of love, legacy, and belief, a filmmaker undergoes a series of home remedies and spiritual rituals as their Southwest Chinese family seeks to rid their queer heir of what they perceive as an unwanted entity.

IN PERSON & ONLINE: This film is being presented with English subtitles for all spoken dialogue (no sound cues indicated).

Directors Bio

Hao Zhou

Hao Zhou is a filmmaker from Nanchuan, China. Their queer and feminist-themed works have screened at the Berlin International Film Festival, Locarno, Rotterdam, and SXSW.

Canada202522 minEnglish, Mandarin with English subtitles2slgbtq+, Documentary, Non-binary, Queer

After a Chinese medicine practitioner is brutalized by police at a recent protest, his community comes together in quiet acts of healing.

IN PERSON: This film is scheduled to be presented fully captioned (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated).

ONLINE: This film is fully captioned in closed captions (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated).

Directors Bio

Yi Shi

Yi Shi is a queer Chinese multidisciplinary artist, tattooer, and filmmaker born in Hangzhou, China. Their lens-based work seeks to disrupt entrenched social structures by centring community voices while exploring the complexities of grief, care, and resistance.

Canada, Germany, Sweden20246 minEnglishAboriginal + Indigenous, Animation, Available Online, Directed By Women, Documentary, Experimental

Take a deep breath. As you exhale, imagine that in about three years, anywhere you went on the planet, you found the molecules that are inside of you in this moment.

IN PERSON: This film is scheduled to be presented fully captioned (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated)

This title is available digitally only in Ontario.

Directors Bio

Alisi Telengut, Diego Galafassi

Alisi Telengut is a Canadian artist of Mongolian origin, living between Berlin and Tiohti:áke/Montréal. Her work has received multiple awards and has been screened and exhibited internationally.

Diego Galafassi is a director, writer, and producer of documentaries, experimental film, new media, and participatory performance.

Canada202410 MinEnglish2slgbtq+, Available Online, Directed By Women, Documentary, Experimental

This experiential and textural short film invites viewers into the inner workings of a mind, to ponder how we love and unlove ourselves.

IN PERSON & ONLINE: this film is scheduled to be presented with subtitles for all spoken dialogue (no sound cues indicated)

Directors Bio

*Tara Hakim & Hannah Hull

Tara Hakim is a Palestinian Jordanian multidisciplinary artist whose public displays of vulnerability invite the viewer to meditate on notions of self, multicultural identities, and spaces in between — both physically and mentally.

Hannah Hull (they/them) is an artist and musician, also known as Burning Salt. The ancient practice of “burning salt” is an act of expulsion, purification or protection.