SPOTLIGHT

REEL ASIAN 2025 BRINGS ASIAN CINEMA CENTRE STAGE

Ali Kazimi, the director of Narmada: A Valley Rises.

The 29th Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival (Reel Asian), Canada’s largest pan-Asian film festival, announced its 2025 programming lineup.

Opening this year’s festival is Space Cadet, directed and scored by Canada’s own Kid Koala, based on his graphic novel of the same name, and fresh off its North American premiere at TIFF. 

The 2025 lineup spotlights 17 film features and 45 short films, showcasing diverse voices and stories from Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Malaysia, Norway, Pakistan, the Philippines, Romania, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vietnam.

Homegrown highlights include: Finch & Midland by Timothy Yeung, which follows four families who immigrated from Hong Kong in Scarborough; Montréal, ma belle starring Joan Chen (Didi, The Home Song Stories) explores the complexities and conflicts of being a middle-aged Chinese mother in Montreal, and There Are No Words, by award-winning returning filmmaker Min Sook Lee (Migrant Dreams, The Real Inglorious Bastards), is a brave mediation on grief, loss, memory and longing.

The Centrepiece Gala presents the Toronto premiere of Akashi, the romantic debut feature by Vancouver-based actor, writer and director Mayumi Yoshida. The festival will also host a Special Singalong Presentation of Netflix’s global hit K-Pop Demon Hunters.

This year, Reel Asian has partnered with the Inside Out Film Festival, which is celebrating 35 years, to present Let’s Do The Time Warp Again!, a bold lineup of animated shorts that push boundaries and reimagine 2SLGBTQ+ storytelling.

The Shorts programme also includes the categories: the rebellious Charged Up, the heartfelt Family Style, the imaginative Otherworlds, the curious Unquenchable and Unsung Voices 14 featuring six emerging Canadian filmmakers who took part in a months-long filmmaking workshop with Reel Asian this past summer. Wee Asian returns offering free drop-in programming and activities for all ages, accompanied by storytelling, arts and play bringing generations together.

The official festival commissioned animation Muse by Janet Mac will be on view at Sankofa Square, playing on rotation from October 9 to November 23. Janet Mac will also take part in an artist talk ahead of the festival opening.

“We are incredibly proud of this year's lineup, which reflects the richness and diversity of voices from emerging talent to returning and established filmmakers,” said Deanna Wong, Executive Director of Reel Asian. “As we approach our 30th anniversary, Reel Asian continues to be more than just a film festival. It is a space for community, dialogue and discovery where audiences can connect through screenings, workshops, panels and conversations that celebrate Asian storytelling in all its forms.”

Canadian documentary filmmaker Ali Kazimi’s Narmada: A Valley Rises has been chosen to screen as the Fire Horse Presentation. Kazimi is an Indian-born and -raised Governor General’s Award–winning filmmaker whose work deals with issues of race, history, and memory. He is a cinema professor at York University, where he has also served as department chair. Kazimi was also Reel Asian’s 2021 Canadian Spotlight Artist.

A scene from Narmada: A Valley Rises.

Narmada: A Valley Rises. Dir. Ali Kazimi* | Canada 1994 | 87 min. | English, Hindi, Bhilali, Marathi, Gujarati | GA. “Narmada: A Valley Rises launched my career as a documentary filmmaker – but more importantly, it was the film that transformed the way I see the world,” says Kazimi. “Made against all odds, the film stands as a testament of endurance and persistence. Researching, shooting, and completing this film fundamentally changed my point of view as a socially committed filmmaker. It took me into the heart of a people’s struggle and forced me to reckon with the realities and brutalities of large-scale development projects in India. It taught me that filmmaking can be an act of solidarity, not just observation. And yet it is also a film that could only have been made in Canada, and one that was also informed by my engagement with Indigenous issues as a diasporic filmmaker.”

Saturday, Nov. 8, 10:15am, TIFF Lightbox Cinema 4.

Other highlights include:

Village Rockstars 2. Dir. Rima Das | India 2024 | 98 min. | Assamese with English subtitles | PG. Reuniting with the cast of her highly acclaimed 2017 festival hit, Village Rockstars, Rima Das returns with a standalone sequel centering Dhunu, now a teenager, who lives in a small village in Assam, India, and dreams of becoming a musician. While Dhunu and her friends navigate the vulnerable transition between childhood and adulthood, weighing new responsibilities and priorities, the elders around them face harsher circumstances brought on by predatory land developers and climate change, affecting their livelihoods and sense of community.

Friday, Nov. 7, 5:30pm, TIFF Lightbox Cinema 4.

Make It Look Real. Dir. Danial Shah | Pakistan 2024 | 67 min. | Urdu, Pashto, Hazaragi | PG. Situated in a modest retail complex in Quetta, Pakistan, is a small photo studio plastered with framed images of clients posing with women they don't know, guns they don’t own, and motorcycles they’ve never ridden. “Make it look real” is the instruction given to the photo studio owner, Muhammad Sakhi, who earnestly captures his clients’ desires and ambitions through staged, saturated, and heavily doctored photographs. Conversations between customers and Sakhi reveal that, although the photos may be fake, the desire and delight behind them are very real.

Serving as a portal to imagined realities, each photograph emerges as a reflection on ideas of gender expression, power, and success, revealing the delicate interplay between identity and longing. As documentary director Danial Shah builds an effortless bond with Sakhi, we’re invited into a welcoming space that offers a compelling observation of the empowerment and sense of freedom possible when identities are allowed to be constructed and reworked.

Saturday Nov, 8, 12:30pm, TIFF Lightbox Cinema 3.

Humans In The Loop. Dir. Aranya Sahay | India 2024 | 72 min. | Hindi, Kurukh | PG. 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.

Wednesday, Nov. 12 AT 7:30pm, Innis Town Hall.

When and where: Nov. 5-15, and online across Canada from Novemebr 10-23. Tickets on sale October 11 at reelasian.com.