Another year, another TIFF under our belts! This year Toronto saw a strong showing from South Korea and Japan alongside many Southeast Asian entries. Beyond national representation, though, the festival refreshingly programmed films across various genres and mediums, creating a diverse range of films for us to sink our teeth into.
Across our team, The Asian Cut was able to make a significant dent in TIFF’s offerings and we’re excited to share our favourite films of the festival!
A Missing Part, dir. Guillaume Senez
A Frenchman spends nine years as a taxi driver travelling the length and breadth of Tokyo just to find his daughter Lily, who was taken away by his ex-wife. Guillaume Senez’s A Missing Part has no twists, neither does it make it a secret what its title means. And yet due to the filmmaker’s direction and Romain Duris’ quiet, tortured performance, we find ourselves heavily invested in his quest to see Lily again. By smartly portraying Tokyo as an unforgiving host — along with Japan’s restrictive family laws surrounding child custody post-divorce — Senez allows us to see through Duris’ Jay what it really means to live incompletely in a place that’s always been foreign to him; and how a chance encounter with a young girl who might be his daughter can fill that ‘missing part’ he’s so achingly wanted filled.
—Paul Enicola
The Gesuidouz, dir. Kenichi Ugana
Needless to say, Kenichi Ugana’s film is an acquired taste. It revels in its own absurdity and deadpan humour that would make Aki Kaurismäki blush. Nevertheless, The Gesuidouz’s strongest suit is its approach to one’s pursuit of their passion, and the peaks and valleys involved in the process. Populating a film with four cross-cultural introverted misfits, a wisecracking talking Shiba Inu, and talking cassette tapes the band’s vocalist literally birthed isn’t exactly what a standard musical film is made of; and yet Ugana makes it work. After all, the film emphasises the lack of glamour in the struggle to create something from scratch, and that oftentimes the beauty lies in the creative process.
—Paul Enicola
Love in the Big City, dir. E.oni
The title and premise might be unassuming — a gay man and his woman best friend trying to find romance (and themselves) in a metropolitan setting — but this film is far from ordinary. Kim Go-eun is breath-taking as Jae-hee, and Steve Sanghyun Noh’s performance as Heung-soo is star-making. With tears and laughter, E.oni’s film is a true crowd-pleaser, an excellent adaptation of Park Sang-young’s eponymous novel, and, I’ll be the first to say it, a welcome addition to Asia’s LGBTQ+ film canon. I suspect it will be screened and studied for years to come, and deservedly so.
—Jericho Tadeo
The Mother and the Bear, dir. Johnny Ma
An unexpected little comedy from Winnipeg (of all places!), The Mother and the Bear features a standout performance from Kim Ho-jung as a typical Korean auntie doing some pretty outrageous things while her 20-something daughter is in a coma. I cringed, I laughed, and I even teared up at this silly, surreal, and ultimately heartwarming film set in the Great White North. Look out for bathtub kimchi and weed gummies.
—Rose Ho
My Sunshine, dir. Hiroshi Okuyama
On the face of it, My Sunshine appears to be a heartwarming tale of puppy love. The grain of the film, the warmth of the palette, the joy in which the two young actors are captured learning an ice dance routine — everything points towards a soaring film about adolescence. And for the most part, director Hiroshi Okuyama delivers on that promise, until a subtle and quiet twist appears that devastates audiences long after the film has finished. Of all the films I watched at TIFF, My Sunshine has clung to me the most.
—Rachel Ho
Santosh, dir. Sandhya Suri
I left the theatre shaking after my screening of Santosh. Writer and director Sandhya Suri couldn’t attend in person, but she sent along a taped introduction to the film that in hindsight feels crucial for a viewing of Santosh. “This film is very dense,” Suri said in her introduction, and boy was she right. Most ostensibly a film examining police brutality in the badlands of Northern India, the film follows the recently widowed Santosh after she inherits her deceased husband’s role as a police constable.
Suri is deft and incisive as she slices through Santosh’s everyday to reveal the tightly-packed layers of class prejudice, colourism, casteism, misogyny, and Islamophobia, among so many other ideas that all chew on each other’s tails, managing all the while to depict Santosh’s work with a heady realism, and understanding. This film isn’t so much about police brutality and prejudice as it is about how deep-seated ideology manifests in the most delicate of our mannerisms, impacting the way we look, talk, and move in the world. This film is very dense, but it is also beautiful, heartbreaking, tender, damning, and above all, necessary.
— Alisha Mughal
The Seed of the Sacred Fig, dir. Mohammad Rasoulof
Mohammad Rasoulof crafts such a gripping narrative about social unrest, packaged with so much searing tension. The Seed of the Sacred Fig starts off as a domestic drama with political intrigue, before taking unexpected turns and transforming into something much grander. I was on the edge of my seat from beginning to end.
—Wilson Kwong
The Shadow Strays, dir. Timo Tjahjanto
Not surprisingly, my most anticipated Asian film of TIFF 2024 also ended up being one of my favourite films coming out of the festival this year. The Shadow Strays is exquisitely violent, yet fiercely emotional, in a way that really articulates how far the action genre can go. Or perhaps, more specifically, how far Timo Tjahjanto can go when he’s in his element. The film certainly cements him as one of cinema’s most talented filmmakers in the genre.
—Wilson Kwong
Watching The Shadow Strays at 10:00 am provided me with a jolt that not even the strongest espresso could muster. From the opening sequence, Tjahjanto holds his audience in a tense chokehold. We’re mesmerized at the graphic violence and obscene gore, but we’re also locked in with Aurora Ribero and her character’s plight. I was already excited for Nobody 2, but after seeing The Shadow Strays, I am absolutely buzzing at what Tjahjanto has in store.
—Rachel Ho
The Wolves Always Come at Night, dir. Gabrielle Brady
How wonderful to see a film which can engage, inform and move in equal measure, using the medium to such unique purposes as this examination of a real-life couple, their specific predicament as Mongolian herders with their lives in upheaval. The poignancy of the life they have lost and the hurdles of what they have to overcome, all articulated against the ominous backdrop of global warming. The Wolves Always Come at Night is a terrifically made film and deeply important one; I hope many more get a chance to see it.
—Calvin Law
