Xiaodan He’s Montréal, ma belle (Montreal, My Beautiful) has been awarded the top Canadian film prize at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, which kicked off its 2025 edition on Wednesday (Nov. 5).

The LGBTQ romance (pictured) won Reel Asian’s RBC Best Canadian Film Award, which was determined by the festival’s three-person features jury: film producer and academic Elizabeth Wijaya; Lucius Dechausay, executive in charge of production at CBC Documentaries; and filmmaker Zarrar Khan, whose debut feature In Flames won the best first feature prize at the 2024 Canadian Screen Awards.

Montreal, My Beautiful (Les Films Camera Obscura, Red Dawn Productions) centres on a middle-aged Chinese immigrant and mother (Joan Chen) who embarks on a passionate affair with a young Quebec woman (Charlotte Aubin). The film previously won the best Canadian film award at this year’s Windsor International Film Festival, as well as an acting prize for Chen at Toronto’s Reelworld Film Festival+Summit.

Other Canadian award winners at Reel Asian include Mayumi Yoshida’s Akashi (Musubi Arts, Experimental Forest Films), which claimed the Osler Best First Feature Award. The drama, about a struggling Vancouver-based visual artist who returns to Tokyo after a long absence following the death of her beloved grandmother, made its world premiere at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival.

Min Sook Lee’s feature documentary There Are No Words was named the winner of the Reel Asian–DOC Institute Best Documentary Award. The National Film Board of Canada production follows Lee as she explores the life and family history of her mother, who died by suicide when the filmmaker was 12 years old.

Short-film winners included Anushay Sheikh’s Same Time Next Year?, which received the Directors Guild of Canada-Ontario and WIFT+ Toronto Film Award; Motel Grand-Pré, which won the Canadian Society of Cinematographers Best Cinematography Award for director/DP Calvin Liu; and Kalainithan Kalaichelvan’s Karupy, whose lead Sumathy Balaram received the award for Outstanding Performer in a Canadian Short Film.

Karupy and Motel Grand-Pré were also two of four Canadian works recognized with the Air Canada Short Film or Video Award, along with Hair! by Sara Jade Alfaro-Dehghani, and the stop-motion-animated short Bugsick from Silverfish Pictures.

The Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival continues in-person through Nov. 15. The festival’s audience awards will be revealed on the final day of its online screening component, which runs from Nov. 10 to 23.

Image courtesy of Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival