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

Canada202287 minutesEnglish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Toisanese, FrenchCanadian PremiereDocumentary, Women Filmmakers

Taking a wide scope, Canadian documentary filmmaker Karen Cho’s Big Fight in Little Chinatown traverses Chinatowns in New York City, Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto, and San Francisco, shining a light on the twin legacies of displacement and resistance that characterize these neighbourhoods. Through interviews with business owners, community groups, and academics, Cho draws a line between the midcentury urban renewal projects that decimated North American Chinatowns and the current development pressures that threaten to drive away residents and organizations – and the community struggles against both.

Amid rapidly gentrifying urban landscapes that jeopardize the future of not only Chinatowns but many other urban racialized communities across the continent, Cho offers an incisive look into what it means to decide to stay rooted in a place that, despite all odds, has become a home.

– Vidhya Elango

Directors Bio

Karen Cho

Karen Cho 曹嘉伦 is a Chinese Canadian filmmaker from Montreal known for her socio-political documentaries that explore themes of identity, immigration, and social justice.

Her work has touched on subjects such as the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act, asylum seekers, the Japanese internment, artist-activists and women’s rights.

Canada202211 minutesFrench with English subtitles World PremiereDance, Experimental, Women Filmmakers

A dancer breaks the silence of incest by responding to her family archives through dance. In the ritual sacrifice of a papaya, she reenacts her traumatic past to emancipate her adult self.

Directors Bio

Dédé Chen

Born in Nanchang, China in 1995, Dédé Chen now lives in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal where she creates works about the performance of filiation. As an anthropologist, she is interested in autoethnography as a source of creative writing.

Canada20229 minutesEnglish, Telugu, Hindi with English subtitles World PremiereWomen Filmmakers

As a wife prepares to celebrate her wedding anniversary, a painful reminder threatens to spoil the evening.

Directors Bio

Samyuktha Movva

Samyuktha Movva is an Indo Canadian writer and filmmaker based in Toronto. In her work, she seeks to explore our complex experience of time, memory, beauty, love, and loss through intimate character studies that traverse languages and cultures.

Canada202212 minutesEnglish, Cantonese with English Subtitles World PremiereFamily, Music, Women Filmmakers

Following her grandfather’s death in China during the pandemic, Ai is forced to confront her depression, the silences in her home, and her parents’ unsung frustrations—including the ancestor ghosts now possessing them.

Directors Bio

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li is a queer writer, director, musician, and interdisciplinary artist. A third-year MFA candidate at the UBC School of Creative Writing, her first chapbook will be released in fall 2022, and she is working on her thesis novel engaging with Chinese philosophy themes. In Silence, We Sing is her debut short film.

Canada202210 minutesEnglish, Mandarin with English subtitles World PremiereDrama, Non-binary Filmmakers, Romance

As Mid-Autumn Festival approaches, a lonesome young Chinese immigrant finds comfort in a whirlwind romance with a mysterious hometown queer crush who seems too good to be true.

Directors Bio

Yi Shi

Yi Shi is a queer Chinese multidisciplinary artist and tattooer born and raised in Hangzhou, China, currently based in Tkaronto, aka Toronto, Canada. Their works seek to investigate the complexity of human emotions—vulnerability, grief, and diasporic longings.

Canada202260 minutesEnglish and various languages with English SubtitlesWorld Premiere

Six first-time and emerging filmmakers embarked on a summer-long filmmaking journey online with Reel Asian's Unsung Voices Youth Video Production Workshop. We’re proud to present their world premieres here.

Canada20226 minutesEnglish with English Subtitles World PremiereDrama, Family, Women Filmmakers

After a pineapple shows up at her front door, Lia returns to her childhood home in search of her father, who hasn’t been seen in months.

Directors Bio

Hannah Polinski

Hannah Polinski is a writer currently based in Montreal. Her work explores familial memory, shifting landscapes, and poetry as a daily practice.

Canada, Kurdistan20228 minutesEnglish, Farsi, Kurdish with English Subtitles World PremiereExperimental

A young woman escapes into a fantasy world where she imagines what life would have been like if she never left her birth country. Faced with who she wants to be, she must come to terms with the in-between.

Directors Bio

Roda Medhat

Roda Medhat is a Kurdish Canadian multidisciplinary artist mainly working in photo and sculpture based work. Dutar (دوتار) is Roda’s writing and directing debut, a story that reflects on his own life living in between cultures.