7 Reel Asian Film Festival titles worth your time, and how to watch from home
CBC
Toronto's Reel Asian Film Festival launched for its 26th year earlier this week, featuring films from creators spread all across the world.
It was also something of a homecoming for the festival, which, like many others, were forced to switch to a virtual format for the past two years. Now back in person, organizers promised to deliver a festival focused on community — without leaving the rest of the country behind.
Here, CBC gathers some of the most exciting films at this year's festival, many of which are available for $15 digital streaming from anywhere in Canada.
98 minutesStreaming Nov. 14 - 17
Filmmaker Kathleen Jayme's The Grizzlie Truth already took home the Audience Award at VIFF earlier this year, for a tongue-in-cheek documentary firmly rooted in the city's history.
The iconic basketball team — who, along with the Toronto Raptors, joined the league in 1995 as the first two modern Canadian franchises — lasted only six seasons in Vancouver before relocating to Memphis as an athletic and financial dud. While everything from a lack of sponsorships to poor draft picks to the NBA lockout have been put forward as the reason (not to mention losing more than 70 per cent of all their games) Jayme says there's something more.
In her fourth film on the team, Jayme talked to former Grizzlies players Bryant (Big Country) Reeves, Shareef Abdur-Rahim and Mike Bibby — and uncovers more about the story than you're probably aware of.
89 minutesStreaming Nov. 14-17
Star Andrea Bang and director Renuka Jeyapalan reunite for this subdued romance after years collaborating on Kim's Convenience. And though this film about a woman stuck in an extended and awkward meet-cute with an NHL hockey player takes place over the course of a single night, it took years to make.
Filmed over three subsequent Marches due to reshoots and COVID-related delays, Bang said she was just glad to see it makes it way to the festival.
"It's a film that is a love letter to Toronto. It was made in Toronto and it was set actually in Toronto, and not a lot of films usually are," she told CBC. "So I just am really, really honoured and excited that it is being shown there."
Outside its Reel Asian streaming window, Stay the Night is releasing in theatres Friday, Nov. 18 in Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa.
117 minutes
Riceboy Sleeps has already swept up a number of awards — pulling in the Best Canadian Film Award at the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Platform Prize at the Toronto International Film Festival and a prestigious $25,000 award at the Windsor International Film Festival.