Japan, Philippines2024102:00Tagalog, JapaneseNorth American PremiereAvailable Online, Directed By Women, Drama, First Feature

In Japan’s aging society, kodokushi — the lonely death of the elderly — has become disturbingly common. Divorced salaryman Yoji (Lily Franky) is confronted with this reality when he discovers his neighbour’s decomposing body. The shocking experience forces him to face his solitude, deepened by his own mother’s ageing. Seeking escape and connection, he follows a caretaker to Manila, where his choice takes an unexpected turn.

Diamonds in the Sand explores the contrasts between two distinct Asian cultures. While reflecting on the isolation faced by many people in modern society, the film also captures the warmth, vitality, and complexity of family life in the Philippines. Within this vibrant setting, bonds bring both joy and hardship, connection and obligation. This is a bittersweet story of acceptance, the courage and impact of our personal choices, and the search for meaning within oneself and community alike.

– Rolando Basmayor

USA2025106 minEnglishToronto Premiere2slgbtq+, Bisexual, Comedy, Directed By Women, First Feature, Gay, Non-binary, Transgender

She’s been cursed. Literally. And she needs $1,000 for the hex-breaking cure. AP (played by director Annapurna Sriram) embarks on a sex worker’s odyssey through pre-millenium Trashtown, U.S.A., where the grass is brown and the cops are kinky. Desperate for a life reset, AP embarks on a scooter-driven adventure with her always-and-forever-tethered ex-lover Danni. Through strip clubs, celebrity mansions, and fortune tellers around every corner, fans of John Waters and 1990s Gregg Araki films will love Sriram’s world-building and her campy, crude, queer take on the buddy film genre.

Fucktoys is a darkly humorous tale about the uphill battle of carving out a new life for oneself and the risks it takes to do it. Sriram’s directorial debut kicks down the door for a new wave of American sexploitation films, while its anarchist spirit is a call to challenge mainstream American filmic conventions.

– Khanh Tudo

Canada2025110 minEnglish, Cantonese, Mandarin with English subtitlesToronto Premiere

Finch and Midland, an intersection in Scarborough, is like many others in the suburbs of Canada's largest city. But every intersection has a story to tell. Timothy Yeung’s Finch & Midland focuses on four stories from the wave of Hong Kong immigrants who came to Canada in the 1990s hoping for a new life: a former pop singer trying to reconnect with his daughter; a woman caring for her elderly mother while yearning for love; a single mother who works in a massage parlour and dreams of becoming a realtor; and a factory manager confronted with a glass ceiling.

Through strip malls, harsh lights, and dark nights, Finch & Midland reinterprets the stories of the community Yeung grew up in, and stars an impressive ensemble cast led by Anthony Wong Chau‑sang. Yeung’s film is an important addition to the recent movement of local cinematic stories from Scarborough that connect to universal themes.

– Aram Siu Wai Collier

Canada, Japan2025105 minEnglish, Japanese with English subtitlesToronto Premiere

Kana, a struggling visual artist, returns to Japan after years away in Vancouver to attend her beloved grandmother’s funeral. The familiar cadence of family dynamics endure and yet, everything feels different. While in Tokyo, Kana discovers her grandfather had a love of his life outside of his arranged marriage to her grandmother. Meanwhile, Kana reluctantly confronts her own messy romantic past with old flame Hiro to see if the embers of their love still flicker.

Adapted from a play and short film of the same name, powerhouse actor-writer-director Mayumi Yoshida presents an impressively romantic first feature, beautifully lensed across two timelines. Yoshida deftly balances swooning, dreamlike nostalgia with the universal realities of distance, time, and circumstance.

– Aram Siu Wai Collier

USA202596 minEnglish, Korean

Special Singalong Presentation with Special Guests

K-pop? Yes, please. Demons? Sure! Hunters? OK, what?

Here’s the story: Rumi, Zoey, and Mira are HUNTR/X, a world-renowned K-pop group who ALSO hunt demons to protect humans from the underworld. But one of them has a secret that could disrupt all they’ve worked for.

The disparate elements of the global sensation K-Pop Demon Hunters don’t seem like they’d work, but they're what make it perfect. The devil (or demon) is in the details, featuring a specificity that distinguishes it from the crowd through a celebration of Korean culture with its relatable characters, animation motifs, and absolute bangin' soundtrack.

It’s all the brainchild of creator and co-director Maggie Kang, who grew up in Toronto and attended Sheridan College. And we’re proud to have her join us in a hometown singalong celebration of K-Pop Demon Hunters. So grab your little "Soda Pop" and show them "How It's Done", cuz we’re gonna be "Golden".

– Aram Siu Wai Collier

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).

India202472 minHindi, KurukhCanadian PremiereAvailable Online

Nehma belongs to the Oraon tribe and lives with her children on the outskirts of Jharkhand, India. Embroiled in a custody battle and a messy divorce, she secures a job at an AI data-labelling centre under the supervision of a stern manager. As we watch her navigate the steep learning curve of her new job and quickly confront the stark realities of biased data, the distortions in the very systems designed to help us become impossible to ignore.

In this remarkably fresh and timely narrative, director Aranya Sahay invites us to consider the volume of marginalized labour and detailed proficiency required to uphold the current growth of AI and our reliance on it. Serving as a cautionary reminder that technology may never replace human wisdom and indigenous knowledge systems, Humans in the Loop is as bold as it is urgent in its depiction of the cracks in widely held perceptions of progress and modernity.

– Mariam Zaidi

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

Canada202485 minEnglish, Cantonese and ToisaneseWorld PremiereAvailable Online, Directed By Women, Documentary, First Feature, History, Immigrant stories, Women Filmmakers

In 1923, Canada passed the ironically named Chinese Immigration Act — better known as the Chinese Exclusion Act — which for the next 24 years barred virtually any Chinese person from entering the country. They were the first ethnic group to be singled out in this way.

In her directorial debut, award-winning actor and playwright Keira Loughran traces her family’s history to show the act’s devastating impact on the Chinese community, focusing on her grandmother, activist Jean Lumb, who was the first Chinese Canadian woman to receive the Order of Canada. Among the many incidents igniting Lumb’s activism was the shocking revocation of her Canadian citizenship when she married Loughran’s Chinese-born grandfather — a lesser-known requirement of the act.

Loughran also connects Canada’s discriminatory practices to the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic, when China was blamed for the virus, ultimately revealing the strength and resilience of a community.

– Deanna Wong

Directors Bio

Keira Loughran

Keira Loughran is a fourth-generation Chinese Canadian theatre artist and filmmaker who has tackled many creative projects that explore her cultural roots and reflect Canada’s multicultural past and present.

Canada2024110 minEnglishDirected By Women, Drama

What would you give up to ensure a world with no war, no poverty, and a stable climate? Your phone? Your car? Your life? That’s the question that looms over Ann Marie Fleming’s near-future fable, where the solution to our world's ills is for humans to die by their 50th year.

It’s not all doom and gloom. For teenage Kiah (Keira Jang), it’s her first day of work as a Documenter. Her world of peace in sun-soaked Powell River, B.C., is all she knows, and she's getting trained by Daniel (Joel Oulette), a seasoned convener of death ceremonies. Meanwhile, Ellie (Sandra Oh) puts on a parent’s brave face for Kiah’s venture into adulthood while making her own empty-nest arrangements.

Veteran director and Reel Asian alum Fleming tackles this existential yarn with warmth and charm, while never avoiding the tough questions: What would you give up? And how do you reconcile the horrors with the beauty of this remarkable world?
– Aram Siu Wai Collier