Asian Heritage Month Film Festival 2025
“Efforts to challenge stereotypes in Asian Canadian Films” | Asian Heritage Month Film Festival programmed by Reelworld
Date: May 29, 2025 | 7:30pm
Location: Innis Town Hall, University of Toronto, 2 Sussex Avenue. Map
FREE ADMISSION. Please register here.
Host: Zaarin Bushra, Program Manager, Reelworld Film Festival
Opening Address: Mr. Justin Poy, Honourary Patron, Asian Heritage Month CFACI and producer of Exclusion: Beyond the Silence
Feature documentary
New feature documentary “Exclusion: Beyond the Silence” with Q&A with the producer and director
EXCLUSION: Beyond the Silence is a feature documentary that reveals the human impact of a discriminatory immigration policy that caused lasting intergenerational trauma to Chinese Canadians, their culture and family life. Two Chinese Canadian women set out on a journey across Canada and to China to learn more about the sacrifices of their grandmothers and their fight for family reunification in the wake of the discriminatory Exclusion Act. The film looks at the continuing impact and resonance of the Chinese Exclusion Act in the lives of contemporary descendants within the Chinese diaspora by unearthing the deeper stories of two women who lived and raised their families in that time, one in Canada and one in China.
Q&A with Helen Lee and Executive Producer and Writer Hu Wei moderated by Zaarin Bushra, Program Manager, Reelworld Film Festival
Event co-organizers: Asian Heritage Month—Canadian Foundation for Asian Culture (Central Ontario) Inc.; Toronto Public Library; Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto; Richard Charles Lee Canada Hong Kong Library, University of Toronto; Chinese Canadian Photography Society of Toronto; Social Services Network; Cambridge Food and Wine Society
Asian Heritage Month Festival is partially funded by the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Asian Canadian Artists in Digital Age is funded by Canada Council for the Arts Digital Strategy Fund.