Alienism in Ostin Fam’s Bình by Ella Nguyen This essay is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative III, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 25th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA. All my life, it feels like I am constantly on the verge of leaving, abandoning a ship that has not yet docked…

by Meera Sethi, November 2021 “Let us know that we are different, let us recognize that we are different, let us not be lumped together or co-opted. I will not be a party to any co-opting of my race into the formation of groups that will only pay lip service…

And Exploring the Conundrums of Film Ranking and Rating by Mathew Gene This essay is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative III, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 25th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA. If you don’t examine your engagement with cinema, what use does it have besides being a dopamine rush? This isn’t to say…

Confronting a Virtual Reel Asian by Hannah Polinski This essay is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative III, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 25th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA. As Bong Joon-Ho opened the 74th Festival de Cannes in the summer of 2021, the Festival’s first return since the start of…

Reflections on Emilie Serri’s DAMASCUS DREAMS by Tina Hafizy This essay is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative III, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 25th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA. Accessibility note: This video is accompanied by captions. Tina is a queer Afghan-Iranian writer based in Toronto. Her current interests include researching stories of resistance, learning the craft of tailoring, and yearning. IG: @re.tina__

by Elida Dizon This essay is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative III, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 25th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA. I was a teenager in the early 2010s and as any young Filipino-Canadian influenced by popular Asian Youtubers, artists and dancers of…

A Capture of RAFF25 in Text and Sound — by Sahar Golshan This essay is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative III, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 25th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA. Author’s notes: Each fragment in the memoir In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado begins with a title that makes a…

by Nick Hsu This essay is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative III, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 25th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA. Content Warning: Abuse, Violence against Women’s Bodies, Sexual Assault Last summer, I went on a two-day camp trip from Taipei to Yilan…

Hosted and produced by Mathew Gene and Hannah Polinski. This conversation is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative III, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 25th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA. A full transcript of the conversation can be found here. Is home a place? A…