China20247 minNo dialogueAnimation, Available Online, Directed By Women, Horror
In the desolate countryside of Northwest China, our protagonist tries to kill a strange, human-faced cockroach, which has been taken by a passerby and revered as a god of the village.
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).
Yinxue Li
Yinxue Li is a Beijing-based graduate from Tsinghua University, Academy of Arts & Design. Human-Faced Cockroach is Li’s first independent animated short film.
7 Nov, 2025 8:30 pm
TIFF Lightbox C4GA
South Korea20203 minKorean with English subtitlesAnimation, Available Online, Music, Queer
One night, while Seolgi is lying on a grass field with friends, a shooting star falls and dark intrusive thoughts hit her, bursting with movement and blooming bright colours.
IN PERSON & ONLINE: This film is being presented with English subtitles for all spoken dialogue (no sound cues indicated).
Sasha Lee
Sasha Lee is an animator who likes plants and animals.
6 Nov, 2025 8:30 pm
TIFF Lightbox C4PG
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).
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.
7 Nov, 2025 8:30 pm
TIFF Lightbox C4PG
CONTENT ADVISORY
conversion therapy; depictions of transphobia
India20227 minEnglish, Kannada with English subtitlesAboriginal + Indigenous, Animation, Directed By Women, Environment, Family-friendly, First Feature
A little girl stumbles into a sacred grove near her village in south India.
Nandini Rao, Nirupa Rao, Kalp Sanghvi
Nandini Rao was the winner of the 2021 Cannes residency program and is based in Paris.
Nirupa Rao is a botanical artist based in Bangalore whose work is inspired by field visits and close collaboration with natural scientists.
Kalp Sanghvi is an animation filmmaker who graduated from the Indian National Institute of Design and is based in Sydney.
This film is part of the WEE ASIAN shorts programme.
Hang out with us for Festival Happy Hour, open to the public! Grab a drink and join in on the casual activities each day.
You rarely couple poop and romance together, but Okiku and the World does it effortlessly in the most genuine and adorable way.
In our inaugural First Films event, award-winning Asian Canadian filmmakers show the first films they’ve ever made. They will reveal their origin stories—that time they caught the movie bug; the place their creative voices first started cracking.
Japan, USA202212 minFarsi, Japanese with English subtitlesAnimation, Drama, Family-friendly, Mystery
Mehrdad, an Iranian boy, befriends an old Japanese woman in a graveyard in Tokyo.
Liam LoPinto
Liam LoPinto is a filmmaker and animator based out of New York City who is an assistant manager at the Moviehouse in Millerton.
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.
Starring Jerry as Himself shakes up notions of traditional storytelling in a genre-bending mystery that centres on Jerry Hsu. Jerry is a loving father of three, a recent divorcé, and has been keeping a secret.
From the team behind Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (Reel Asian Official Selection, 2021) comes Junta Yamaguchi’s latest time loop comedy, River. Set in a quaint inn along the Kibune river near Kyoto—a one-street village wedged between a riverbed on one side and mountains on the other—staff and guests find themselves stuck in a continuous two-minute time loop.
South Korea202311 minKorean with English subtitlesAnimation, Drama, Family-friendly, Fantasy
A grieving boy finds his late mother’s hair caught in the shower drainage hole and gets swept into the “Hair Universe,” an unknown world underneath the bathtub.
Jinuk Choi
Jinuk Choi is a Korean filmmaker based in New York.
This film is part of the WEE ASIAN shorts programme.
Some family stories are so epic they demand telling. Some moments in history require the intimate and inside knowledge of community storytellers. The venerated Chinese Canadian filmmaker Keith Lock narrates the story of how his mother married his father in Australia, who was training with other Chinese Canadian veteran volunteers for the top secret suicide mission, Operation Oblivion.
Last fall, the DOC Institute invited creative producers to reimagine a documentary ecosystem that recognizes the needs of BIPOC producers with critically acclaimed projects, and published their thoughts in the “Creative Producer Think Tank Report.” A key point highlighted was producer/director relationships—listen as panelists delve into the critical and vital collaboration that underpins any successful film.
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!
Taiwan, USA20235 minEnglishAnimation, Comedy, Directed By Women, Family-friendly, Music
Nonoko the cat and Haro the rabbit dance to share a bittersweet goodbye on their graduation day.
Wanci Hua
Wanci Hua is a Taiwanese animator, currently studying at California Institute of the Arts. She loves telling whimsical and tender stories through the art of animation.
This film is part of the WEE ASIAN shorts programme.
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.
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.
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.
Canada20232 minNo Dialogue Animation, Directed By Women, Family-friendly
A lonely traveller plans to explore a small town, when a stranger suddenly joins him.
This film has no dialogue and is presented without captions.
Michelle Chen
Michelle Chen is an artist based in Burlington, Ont. A colour enthusiast with a passion for background painting, she can often be found cooking (and eating), or cuddling with her cat, Goober.
This film is part of the WEE ASIAN shorts programme.
Catch author Jeff Yang in conversation with RepresentASIAN Project's EIC and founder Madelyn Chung about his new book, THE GOLDEN SCREEN. Purchase a copy and get it signed!
Some family stories are so epic they demand telling. Some moments in history require the intimate and inside knowledge of community storytellers. The venerated Chinese Canadian filmmaker Keith Lock narrates the story of how his mother married his father in Australia, who was training with other Chinese Canadian veteran volunteers for the top secret suicide mission, Operation Oblivion.
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."
Pakistan, USA202216 minUrdu with English subtitlesAnimation, Comedy, Directed By Women, Drama, Family-friendly
Iman, a privileged six-year-old Pakistani girl, embarks on a mission to save her beloved pet goat from being eaten on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.
Mahnoor Euceph
Mahnoor Euceph is a Pakistani American writer and director. She immigrated from Pakistan to Los Angeles at age eight and quickly learned that nobody else cares about cricket.
This film is part of the WEE ASIAN shorts programme.
These shorts look at the soft to even slightly off-kilter bonds we find in one another, the realms we exist in, and ultimately, ourselves, despite ongoing change—no friendship bracelets required.
Chloe Abrahams’ debut feature, is an enveloping, hypnotic, urgently personal meditation on family, memory, identity, violence, and love.
USA20233 minEnglishAnimation, Comedy, Family-friendly, Japan
Daigoro, a baby thunder god, dreams of being as powerful as his father.
Ryotaro Sawada, Agatha Tiara Christa
Growing up, Ryotaro Sawada turned to his daydreams to be entertained, only to find out that there were people called animators who could bring those daydreams to life. He hasn’t looked back since.
Agatha Tiara Christa, also known as Rara, is a 3D animator and layout artist from Indonesia. She believes that these small things create stories and always includes them in her work.
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.
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.
Hang out with us for Festival Happy Hour, open to the public! Grab a drink and join in on the casual activities each day.
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
