Accessibility
–
This programme is presented with a mix of open captions, English subtitles, and no captions. Wheelchair spaces and step-free seating is available for this screening – click below to book accessible seats.
Canada, Denmark, Germany, South Korea, USA2022-2023TRT: 1h32English, French, Mandarin, Buryat Mongolian, Korean2slgbtq+, Animation, Directed By Women, Experimental
There’s no need to be certain about what’s next as this collection of shorts places us in a position to face specific pivotal moments of reckoning. Whether we’re feeling stuck or turbulent in the chaos of transition, can we remain gentle to ourselves?
*Directors in attendance starred.
Canada202315 minEnglish2slgbtq+
Faye, a 16-year-old ballet dancer, prepares for her final solo.
*Emma Zuck
Emma Zuck is a filmmaker with a focus on directing and screenwriting, whose work is born from growing pains: her soft spot for the sentimental, her childhood of prairie antics, and the contradictory feelings of “home.”
Denmark, South Korea20228 minNo Dialogue Animation, Directed By Women, Experimental
Unable to find the presence of women in the artwork of Lee Jung-seob, I am a Horse spins an imaginative tale inspired by tae-mong (Korean birth dreams) of women born with half of their bodies, being a horse and a tiger.
This film has no dialogue and is presented without captions.
Chaerin Im
Chaerin Im is a filmmaker from South Korea with a focus on experimental animation. With the use of craftsmanship and distinctive materials, she explores gender issues and sexual imagery.
USA202216 minEnglishDirected By Women, Disability, Drama, Family-friendly
Anna, a cognitively disabled woman, and her estranged sister, Emily, must learn to communicate after their mother’s death in order to move forward.
Liz Sargent
Liz Sargent is a Korean American adoptee writer and director, whose award-winning work explores themes of adoption, disability, and family.
Canada20232 minFrench with English subtitlesAnimation, Directed By Women, Family-friendly
Following an exchange of text messages with her mother about her newly adopted dog Abby, a young woman sees her experience as a transracial adoptee reflected in this adoption.
Fanny Lord-Bourcier
Fanny Lord-Bourcier is a multidisciplinary artist and animator. Curious and keen, she is continuously willing to adopt and be adopted by new places, disciplines, mediums, and people.
USA202318 minEnglish, Mandarin with English subtitles2slgbtq+, Documentary, Drama, Experimental
Opaque memories seep into a quotidian flow despite efforts to move onward.
*Emory Chao Johnson
Emory Chao Johnson (they/them) is an artist settled on the land of the Tongva whose work centres on the real and abstract forces that charge queer trans lifeworlds.
Canada, Germany20239 minBuryat Mongolian with English subtitlesAboriginal + Indigenous, Animation, Directed By Women, Documentary, Experimental, Family-friendly
The formation and history of Lake Baikal in Siberia are re-imagined with handmade animation, featuring the voice of a Buryat woman who can still recall some words in her endangered language.
Alisi Telengut
Alisi Telengut is a Canadian artist of Mongolian roots, living between Berlin and Tiohtià:ke/Montréal.
South Korea202224 minKorean with English subtitlesAnimation, Directed By Women, Drama
Sejin once had the power to have anything she wanted just by thinking about it. But now she has lost her magic.
HAN Jiwon
Ji-won Han is an animation film director, illustrator, and comic book writer who often approaches themes focused on subjective moments and emotions of the younger generation living in the pressure cooker of South Korean society.
PG
11 Nov, 2023 5:00 pm
TIFF Bell Lightbox 4–
This programme is presented with a mix of open captions, English subtitles, and no captions. Wheelchair spaces and step-free seating is available for this screening – click below to book accessible seats.
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.
You rarely couple poop and romance together, but Okiku and the World does it effortlessly in the most genuine and adorable way.
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!
Canada2022103 minutesEnglish, SnslxcinCanadian PremiereDocumentary
When a man from the “extinct” Sinixt people in what’s called British Columbia’s Slocan Valley challenges his deportation to the United States, the question arises: How can his people be extinct when he is very much alive? Decorated filmmaker Ali Kazimi’s new documentary traces a decades-long fight by Sinixt elder Marilyn James to have her people’s existence recognized amid threats from colonial bureaucratic erasure, corporate interests, and land claims from other groups.
Told with the hallmarks of Kazimi’s style, Beyond Extinction involves a mixture of observational footage, contemporary interviews, oral histories, survival stories told by matriarchs, and personal as well as public archives, to tell a story that’s never told before. Shot over decades from the 1990s to our present day, the temporal trajectory of the film and its featured subjects gives us vital perspective on our collective place on this land and how we choose to fight for our legacies.
- Aram Siu Wai Collier
OFFICIAL SELECTION
DOXA Documentary Film Festival, 2022
Planet in Focus International Environment Film Festival, 2022
Ali Kazimi
Ali Kazimi is an India-born and -raised Governor General’s Award-winning filmmaker whose work deals with issues of race, history, and memory. He is a full professor in the Department of Cinema & Media Arts at York University, where he has also served as department chair. Kazimi was also Reel Asian’s 2021 Canadian Spotlight Artist.
12 Nov, 2022 2:30 pm
OnlineThe screening for Beyond Extinction: Sinixt Resurgence will be shown at TIFF Bell Lightbox 4. This feature film will also be shown as an online screening from Nov 14 – Nov 20.
RATED PG
Content Warning: Racism
Join us for a Q&A immediately after the theatrical presentation with director Ali Kazimi VIA ZOOM.
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.
In this oddly sweet and gentle story, Hong, a shy young man, opens his eyes to love when he coincidentally meets Lele, the mistress of a sex worker business.
In 1993, UFOs suddenly appeared over key cities around the world. The huge structures remained in the sky, stationary, silent, and unknown. Twenty-nine years later, with neither the origins nor the intentions of their arrival deciphered, humanity succumbs to speculations that aliens are walking among us. This feature film will also be shown as an online screening.
Canada20213 minutesEnglishDocumentary, Experimental, Women Filmmakers
A fleeting and poetic retrospect of a young woman who develops a chronic illness.
ACCESSIBILITY
This film is presented with open English subtitles in-person and closed English subtitles digitally.
RATING
RATED PG
Shubhi Sahni
Shubhi Sahni is an Indian Canadian filmmaker based in Los Angeles and Toronto. She makes intimate films in the space between documentary and fiction. Sahni is an Annenberg Fellow at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.
This film is part of the Muscle Memory shorts programme.
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.
Hye-jeong leaves a protest group of closely knit families, mourning the victims of an industrial accident, to which she also lost her husband.
Amidst a mountain of food, jokes, prayers, joints, songs and Filipino Elvis impersonations, Lolo's Child questions, criticizes and celebrates the intricate underbelly of the Filipino-Canadian community. Reel Asian's Opening Night Film in 2002.
Canada, USA202210 minutesEnglish and Mandarin with English subtitlesDrama, Family, Women Filmmakers
In the face of uncontrollable sorrow, Bo desperately suppresses a “grief flower” sprouting from his face before his big speech at his father’s funeral.
ACCESSIBILITY
This film is presented with open captions in-person and closed captions digitally.
RATING
RATED PG
Wendy Xu
Wendy Xu is a rising Chinese Canadian filmmaker whose narrative recipes never fail to include just a pinch of absurdity and humour.
This film is part of the Muscle Memory shorts programme.
Missed chances, unspoken conversations, fated meetings, connections sparked in the most unexpected places: these shorts delve into the weight of all our relations in their fullness and in their absence.
How do you love a place that doesn’t seem to love you back Director David Siev broaches that question in Bad Axe, a complicated love letter to his hometown.
Amidst a mountain of food, jokes, prayers, joints, songs and Filipino Elvis impersonations, Lolo's Child questions, criticizes and celebrates the intricate underbelly of the Filipino-Canadian community. Reel Asian's Opening Night Film in 2002.
Singapore202210 minutesEnglish and Mandarin with English subtitlesAnimation, Comedy, Women Filmmakers
Following three separate stories, four average Singaporeans encounter a sexual situation in the course of their day.
ACCESSIBILITY
This film is presented with open English subtitles in-person and digitally.
RATING
RATED PG
Content warning: Self-harm, blood, sexist language and situations, abortion, strobing lights
Calleen Koh
Calleen Koh is BAFTA-nominated animated-film director and artist from Singapore. She loves to make people laugh but also be disturbed by her sexy, manic, animated films.
This film is part of the Muscle Memory shorts programme.
Following three Muslim women activists who have come of age since 9/11, An Act of Worship is a unique glimpse into the lives of a new generation of American Muslims deeply impacted by over 40 years of history that has shaped their lives and trajectories in powerful and irreversible ways.
Challenging norms, paving the road, and telling fresh stories, our Canadian Spotlight Artist program is dedicated to a member of the dynamic and talented Asian Canadian film community. This program celebrates a selected artist by activating their journey, process, and future works.
This year’s Reel Ideas Conference gathers industry professionals, filmmakers, and performers to reflect on the specificity in their works, representing their own nuances along with their communities' lived experiences.
Canada20229 minutesEnglish and Urdu with English subtitlesDrama, Family
Sania must take her mother, Noor, for a doctor’s appointment—serving as her parent and translator.
ACCESSIBILITY
This film is presented with open captions in-person and closed captions digitally.
RATING
RATED PG
Haaris Qadri
Haaris Qadri is an emerging filmmaker based in Brampton and a graduate from York University’s Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film Production Specialized Honours. Qadri is drawn to diasporic stories, contemplating questions of identity, home, and belonging.
This film is part of the Muscle Memory shorts programme.
Keita is the hero and the hope of the remote island Shishikari thanks to his flourishing fig business, which is about to bring in a large government grant and revitalize the community.
Set in the 1990s, South Korean immigrant and single mother So-young looks to make a fresh start in a West Coast Canadian suburb with her son Dong-hyun.
So You Think You Can Pitch is back in person for Reel Asian’s 26th annual festival! Catch the live showdown between finalists as they pitch their short-film projects to a jury for a chance to win our amazing prize package to kickstart or finish their film.
Canada, India, Singapore, USA2022English and other languages with English subtitlesAnimation, Drama, Experimental, Family, LGBTQ+ Filmmakers, Non-binary Filmmakers, Women Filmmakers
From dusk ‘til dawn, the night takes centre stage as a mood, setting, tone, and place for our characters’ lives and their environments to be illuminated on screen.
India202213 minutesBengali with English subtitles
Satakshi and Madhyama reunite at a celebration during Durga Puja. Over the course of the night through rides, snacks, and glances, we feel their relationship charged with an energy that lasts years.
ACCESSIBILITY
This film is presented with open English subtitles in-person and digitally.
RATING
RATED PG
Tanmay Chowdhury and Tanvi Chowdhury
Tanmay Chowdhury is a cinematographer, editor, photographer, and filmmaker. His photography has been published in various magazines and publications worldwide, including Rolling Stone and Vogue.
Tanvi Chowdhury is a writer and filmmaker who seeks to explore and tell stories about human dynamics, identity, and gender.
Canada202214 minutesEnglish and Vietnamese with English subtitles
Titled after the term “nanitic,” referring to first-generation worker ants who care for their offspring as well as the Queen Ant, we witness the structure of a multigenerational family through the eyes of Trang and Mai.
ACCESSIBILITY
This film is presented with open captions in-person and closed captions digitally.
RATING
RATED PG
Content warning: Death and dying
Carol Nguyen
Carol Nguyen is a Vietnamese Canadian filmmaker based in Montreal who is working toward her first documentary feature as well as an animated short.
Singapore, USA20224 minutesEnglishAnimation, Women Filmmakers
Why should I make dinner if we are both in love? A story of gendered roles and the ethics of care.
ACCESSIBILITY
This film has no dialogue and is not captioned.
RATING
RATED PG
Content warning: Gender violence, queer violence, nudity
Elizabeth Xu
Born and raised in Singapore, Elizabeth Xu attends the Rhode Island School of Design for animation. They are excited by the potential of analogue mediums and tangible surfaces, and in their free time, they make books and think about conversation as a beautiful medium.
USA202215 minutesEnglish and Mandarin with English subtitles
One night for Lu, a New York City delivery driver.
ACCESSIBILITY
This film is presented with open captions in-person and closed captions digitally.
RATING
RATED PG
Lloyd Lee Choi
Lloyd Lee Choi is a Korean Canadian writer and director living in Brooklyn who was named 30 Under 30 by Marketing Magazine. Choi is compelled to tell stories that reflect the real world around us.
USA202222 minutesEnglish and Mandarin with English subtitles
In an isolated desert motel, Mengmeng digs up a rotting carcass. Later that night, something long buried is unearthed in her mother.
ACCESSIBILITY
This film is presented with open captions in-person and closed captions digitally.
RATING
RATED PG
Content warning: Death
Yvonne Zhang
Yvonne Zhang is a British Chinese director and writer who uses folklore, dream logic, and digital media to explore immigration, memory, and loss.
13 Nov, 2022 5:30 pm
OnlineThe screening for Night Shifts will be shown at TIFF Bell Lightbox 4.
This shorts programme will also be shown as an online screening from Nov 14 – 20. Purchase the shorts VOD pass to watch this programme online and all other shorts in selection at the festival.
Rated PG
Join us for a Q&A immediately after the theatrical presentation with attending guests from this shorts programme, moderated by Blythe Shulan Hunter.
Blythe Shulan Hunter
Blythe is a Toronto-based writer, editor, and member of Reel Asian’s Programming Committee. She holds an MA in Cinema Studies from the University of Toronto, where she focused on race and aesthetics of ‘yellowness’ in East Asian music videos. Her core interests include contemporary Chinese cinema and learning K-pop dances.
In 1993, UFOs suddenly appeared over key cities around the world. The huge structures remained in the sky, stationary, silent, and unknown. Twenty-nine years later, with neither the origins nor the intentions of their arrival deciphered, humanity succumbs to speculations that aliens are walking among us. This feature film will also be shown as an online screening.
So You Think You Can Pitch is back in person for Reel Asian’s 26th annual festival! Catch the live showdown between finalists as they pitch their short-film projects to a jury for a chance to win our amazing prize package to kickstart or finish their film.
When a man from the “extinct” Sinixt people in what’s called British Columbia’s Slocan Valley challenges his deportation to the United States, the question arises: How can his people be extinct when he is very much alive? This feature film will also be shown as an online screening.
Cambodia202224 minutesKhmer and Bunong with English subtitlesDrama
Indigenous Bunong siblings spend one last day in their rural village in northeastern Cambodia, before an impending move to the capital city in search of a more prosperous life.
ACCESSIBILITY
This film is presented with open English subtitles in-person and digitally.
RATING
RATED PG
Polen Ly
Polen Ly paused his studies in medicine to pursue filmmaking in 2012. He has directed several shorts and documentaries, exploring environmental and human rights issues, including LGBTQ+ and Indigenous experiences.
This film is part of the Muscle Memory shorts programme.
Brothers Saud and Nadeem live in a working-class, predominantly Muslim neighbourhood in New Delhi, where they have made it their lives’ work to care for injured black kites falling from the polluted skies of the city.
CBC and Reel Asian are proud to present a special evening celebrating the traditions and spirit of Tết beautifully shown in “Li Xi”, season 1, episode 9 of Run The Burbs.
From dusk ‘til dawn, the night takes centre stage as a mood, setting, tone, and place for our characters’ lives and their environments to be illuminated on screen.
USA2022102 minutesEnglishToronto PremiereDocumentary
How do you love a place that doesn’t seem to love you back Director David Siev broaches that question in Bad Axe, a complicated love letter to his hometown. Siev’s dad, a survivor of the Cambodian Killing Fields, has spent decades building a new life in Bad Axe, but the city is not always hospitable to immigrants. Siev’s sister’s outspoken support for Black Lives Matter puts her at odds with her family restaurant’s most loyal, Trump-supporting customers. Unfolding across the turbulent year of 2020, this personal documentary follows Siev’s family as they struggle to keep their restaurant afloat amid family tensions, neo-Nazis, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
At times, the film is an unsettling portrait of racism’s existence in our everyday lives, but it equally insists on being about family and community. In his feature-documentary debut, Siev gives us an intimate account of a family in troubled times, fraught with uncertainty, yet held by a bond as deep as roots go.
– Ron Ma
AWARDS
Audience Award Winner, Documentary Feature – SXSW, 2022
pecial Jury Recognition, Exceptional Intimacy in Storytelling – SXSW, 2022
David Siev
David Siev holds producing, camera, and consulting credits on everything from hidden-camera blockbuster comedies like Bad Trip (2021) to rock-and-roll biopics such as The Dirt (2019).
11 Nov, 2022 9:00 pm
TIFF Bell Lightbox 4The screening for Bad Axe will be shown at TIFF Bell Lightbox 4.
Rated PG
Content Warning: Racist language and situations
This film is not captioned.
Keita is the hero and the hope of the remote island Shishikari thanks to his flourishing fig business, which is about to bring in a large government grant and revitalize the community.
So You Think You Can Pitch is back in person for Reel Asian’s 26th annual festival! Catch the live showdown between finalists as they pitch their short-film projects to a jury for a chance to win our amazing prize package to kickstart or finish their film.
Tune into this beloved section online to access free programming for all ages that will spark joy, inspire creativity, and encourage wonder.
USA202282 minutesEnglish, Arabic with English subtitlesToronto PremiereDocumentary, Women Filmmakers
Following three Muslim women activists who have come of age since 9/11, An Act of Worship is a unique glimpse into the lives of a new generation of American Muslims deeply impacted by over 40 years of history that has shaped their lives and trajectories in powerful and irreversible ways.
Aber is a community organizer leading a sanctuary city initiative in New York. Khadega is finding her way while advocating for her community in Michigan. Ameena is a civil-rights lawyer in California navigating motherhood while fighting for change. Interwoven with their stories is a historical timeline skilfully combined with home movies to create a deeply moving and meaningful tapestry of shared trauma, culture, joy, and resistance. An Act of Worship is an emotional portrait about a community that has undergone enormous change, but one that is taking control of their narrative on a path towards power and defiance against further marginalization.
- Mariam Zaidi
OFFICIAL SELECTION
Tribeca Film Festival, 2022
Nausheen Dadabhoy
Nausheen Dadabhoy is a director and cinematographer whose work spans fiction and documentary. She has lensed an Oscar-nominated film, an Emmy-winning documentary, and films that have played at Sundance, TIFF, and Locarno, as well as on Al Jazeera, HBO, and PBS. Her directorial debut The Ground Beneath Their Feet premiered at IDFA.
13 Nov, 2022 3:00 pm
OnlineThe screening for An Act of Worship will be shown at TIFF Bell Lightbox 4.
This feature film will also be shown as an online screening from Nov 14 – Nov 20.
RATED PG
This film is presented with open captions in-person and closed captions digitally.
Join us for a Q&A immediately after the theatrical presentation with director Nausheen Dadabhoy
If From Every Tongue It Drips is a documentary constructed between three locations that follows Ponni, who writes a form of 19th-century queer Urdu poetry called Rekhti, and her lover Sarala, a camera operator.
Romeo Candido’s latest musical foray Topline takes us into the world of topliners: the people who write the lyrics, melodies, and hooks for the industry’s biggest stars.
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.
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
