This film is part of the Shorts Presentation: UNDERCURRENTS shorts programme.
Canada, South Korea202432 MinEnglish, Korean, FrenchAvailable Online, Directed By Women, Documentary, Experimental, History
A prismatic exploration recounting the 1950s visit of Parisian elites led by Chris Marker and Claude Lanzmann in the newly formed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the communist state that claims the allegiance of the filmmaker’s grandmother during the Korean War.
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)
*Helen Lee
Helen Lee is a Seoul-born, Toronto-based filmmaker whose works explore intersectionalities of place, identity, and sexuality. She works in fiction and essay films, featuring diasporic gendered subjects from feminist and transnational perspectives.
This film is part of the Shorts Presentation: UNDERCURRENTS shorts programme.
17 Nov, 2024 4:00 pm
TIFF Lightbox C4CONTENT ADVISORY
Depictions of war, conflict, trauma, and slight nudity; mentions of suicide
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.
This film is part of the WEE ASIAN shorts programme.
23 Nov, 2024 10:00 am
Innis Town HallGA
CONTENT ADVISORY
Mild flash imagery
Canada, USA20245 minEnglishAvailable Online, Directed By Women, Documentary, Experimental
After accessing the 119-page custodial file of her great-grandfather in the National Archives of Canada, A.S.M. Kobayashi discovers new details about her Japanese family's history and their lives before internment.
A.S.M. Kobayashi
A.S.M. Kobayashi is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist whose hybrid, interactive work mixes documentary and fiction through video, performance, installation, and illustration.
This programme precedes NOBUKO MIYAMOTO: A SONG IN MOVEMENT.
19 Nov, 2024 7:00 pm
Innis Town HallGA
This film is scheduled to be presented with subtitles for all spoken dialogue (no sound cues indicated)
This film is scheduled to be presented fully captioned (all dialogue subtitled + sound cues indicated)
Canada20249 minEnglishWorld PremiereAvailable Online, Comedy, Directed By Women, Drama, Experimental, Science Fiction
A burnt-out writer uses AI to deliver a script, only to discover the true essence of human creativity.
IN PERSON & ONLINE: This film is scheduled to be presented with subtitles for all spoken dialogue (no sound cues indicated)
*Assel Akhmetova
Assel Akhmetova (she/her) is a Toronto-based Kazakh editor and director, with a passion for writing and a curiosity for exploring new ways of cinema.
This film is part of the Shorts Presentation: UNSUNG VOICES 13 shorts programme.
16 Nov, 2024 2:30 pm
TIFF Lightbox C3Canada20229 minEnglishComedy, Documentary, Experimental
Pixels of the Orient appropriates Western media depictions of East Asia for a psychedelic and comedic exploration of ahistorical East Asian aesthetics and identity.
*Warren Chan
Warren Chan is a video artist and curator with a focus on experimental works that analyze digital and new media technologies.
This film is part of the Shorts Presentation: UNDER THE INFLUENCE shorts programme.
Directed by Meredith Hama-Brown. Judith, a Japanese Canadian woman, and her reluctant white husband attend a week-long couple’s retreat on a coastal British Columbia island, their two daughters in tow. With Judith grieving the recent loss of her mother, and her connection to her Japanese Canadian identity, the couple’s disconnect grows as she finds herself infatuated with another, seemingly perfect, interracial couple at the retreat.
Chloe Abrahams’ debut feature, is an enveloping, hypnotic, urgently personal meditation on family, memory, identity, violence, and love.
When Azra, a queer Muslim grad student, hears of her father’s sudden death, she flies back to her ancestral home in Karachi, Pakistan for the funeral, where she is received by her conservative mother, Mariam, perpetually disappointed by Azra’s choices. As a self-assured Azra wrestles with Karachi’s customs and norms, we time travel back to Mariam’s own life in the city 30 years ago, a remarkably different era in Pakistan’s political and cultural history.
Singapore202211 minEnglish Animation, Comedy, Directed By Women, Experimental
In the strange, polarized world of Hands and Butts, a single act of violence toward an oppressed Butt sets the mediaverse ablaze.
Calleen Koh
Calleen Koh finds joy in turning serious societal issues into wacky stories using her crazy sexy characters, like anthropomorphic sushis, phallic Crayola-coloured children or walking butts in her manic animated films.
This film is part of the Shorts Presentation: UNDER THE INFLUENCE shorts programme.
We are kicking off the 27th edition Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival with a night to remember! Celebrate with us at our Festival Launch Party, co-hosted by New Ho Queen!
Hmm … this doesn’t seem right?! This programme asks us to sit with the discomforting feelings that arise when we begin to confront the unknown in what we believe to know.
Step into the thrilling world of TV writing with a range of talented writers as they share their insights into crafting a successful TV series, advancing careers in the writers' room, and promoting diversity in showrunning.
Iran, New Zealand20224 minFarsi with English subtitlesAnimation, Directed By Women, Experimental
Back-and-forth movement blends discrete pictures into each other, contrasting the memory of innocent childhood life in a remote, peaceful environment against the surrounding political affairs of post-revolutionary Iran.
Zahra Salarnia
Zahra Salarnia is an Iranian artist based in New Zealand. She seeks to explore alternative and unconventional methods for making and presenting animation.
This film is part of the Shorts Presentation: HERE WE ARE shorts programme.
Six fearless emerging filmmakers embarked on a summer-long filmmaking journey online. We’re proud to present their world premiere here in the 12th edition of Reel Asian’s filmmaking program.
Hmm … this doesn’t seem right?! This programme asks us to sit with the discomforting feelings that arise when we begin to confront the unknown in what we believe to know.
We are kicking off the 27th edition Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival with a night to remember! Celebrate with us at our Festival Launch Party, co-hosted by New Ho Queen!
UK20223 minEnglishAnimation, Experimental, Science Fiction
A mad clock takes the viewer on a time trip to a random planet where the concept of time is experienced differently from the one we know...
*Shunny Kim & Taewan Kim
Shunny Kim and Taewan Kim are animators based in London. Co-directing their BA graduation film, their interests aligned through experimental animation, character design and collaboration.
CONTENT WARNING: Flashing lights
This film is part of the Shorts Presentation: THE STRANGE, THE ODD, AND THE FAMILIAR shorts programme.
Free-spirited 12-year-old Zaffan is the first of her friends to get her period and experience the body-changing horrors that come with puberty and menstruation.
Jude Chehab, a Lebanese American cinematographer and filmmaker, has always known her mother and grandmother to be women devoted to their Muslim faith. During a trip to Lebanon, Chehab is propelled by a curiosity to understand the quest for love, acceptance, and meaning that brought three generations of women in her family to pledge loyalty to a secretive matriarchal religious order operating clandestinely in the country.
The Good Guise is an artist collective in Toronto formed to spark conversations around healthy masculinity.
Malaysia202312 minEnglishExperimental, Fantasy
Two crocodilian men go to a swimming pool to cool off. One of them is seemingly of a different and special kind; the other is unable to control his desire.
Mark Chua & Lam Li Shuen
Mark Chua and Li Shuen Lam are a filmmaker and artist duo. Their films often employ absurdist imagery, thinking on place, histories and the peculiarity of human desire.
This film is part of the Shorts Presentation: THE STRANGE, THE ODD, AND THE FAMILIAR shorts programme.
Blue Ant Media is looking for its next hit factual paranormal series with T&E and HauntTV's global free streaming channel. Join us for a spooky information session with Blue Ant Media's Sam Linton, VP Production and Development and Julie Chang, EVP Business Strategy and Co-productions, to get all of your questions answered.
Chloe Abrahams’ debut feature, is an enveloping, hypnotic, urgently personal meditation on family, memory, identity, violence, and love.
Discover the comedically honest and heartwarming story of the CBC Gem original short-form series How to Fail as a Popstar in our screening of the first three episodes followed by a panel discussion, "The Clumsy Art of Finding Yourself."
Singapore, USA20238 minNo dialogue2slgbtq+, Animation, Experimental, Romance
One night, a person brushes the teeth of a dog and turns into a bus.
This film has no dialogue and is presented without captions.
Elizabeth Xu Yuan Li (EXYL)
EXYL is a filmmaker and animator born and raised in Singapore. They were trained in painting and drawing, but moved slowly but surely into time-based mediums like live action and animation.
This film is part of the Shorts Presentation: THE STRANGE, THE ODD, AND THE FAMILIAR shorts programme.
Six fearless emerging filmmakers embarked on a summer-long filmmaking journey online. We’re proud to present their world premiere here in the 12th edition of Reel Asian’s filmmaking program.
For our Closing Night Event, come celebrate the live So You Think You Can Pitch competition at the 27th Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival. Reception to follow.
Initiated in 2002 by Yuni Hadi (Singapore), Amir Muhammad (Malaysia) and Chalida Uabumrungjit (Thailand), S-Express has become an annual showcase of programming from Southeast Asia, spotlighting the abundant filmmaking talent and a nuanced insight into the stories of each participating region. This year, Reel Asian presents S-Express Malaysia, programmed by Chong Lee Yow of Mini Film Festival, featuring five films depicting one's ability to (un)trap themselves from limitations set upon them, be it bodily, mind, or soul, to achieve relief and victory.
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.
401 Richmond Street West, The Commons (Suite 448)
Toronto, Ontario, M5V 3A8 Canada
(416) 703 – 9333
info@reelasian.com
Charitable number: 870021383RR0001
