Your TIFF 2025 Film Guide: Spotlight on Chinese and Asian Creators
Written by Fête Chinoise Editorial team
Images Credit: Courtesy of TIFF
September 4th – 14th | Toronto, Canada
TIFF 2025 is almost here, and this year’s lineup is packed with boundary-pushing stories from across Asia and the diaspora. From established auteurs like Chloé Zhao, Park Chan-wook, and Peter Ho-Sun Chan to bold new voices making their feature debuts, the selection showcases a remarkable range of vision, genre, and storytelling. To help you navigate the lineup, we’ve rounded up some of the most exciting films from Chinese and Asian filmmakers premiering at the festival, spanning historical epics, haunting dramas, offbeat comedies, and supernatural tales.
Public tickets go on sale August 25. Scroll down to see what you won’t want to miss.
Ballad of a Small Player
Directed by Edward Berger
Canadian Premiere
Starring Colin Farrell, Fala Chen, Tilda Swinton, Deanie Ip, Alex Jennings
Oscar-winning filmmaker Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front) brings a moody, slow-burn noir to Macau’s glittering casinos. Colin Farrell plays a washed-up English gambler trying to outrun his past, while Fala Chen and Tilda Swinton ground the film with tension and elegance. A portrait of self-deception, debt, and the cost of reinvention.
Silent Friend
Directed by Ildikó Enyedi
North American Premiere
Starring Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Luna Wedler, Enzo Brumm, Sylvester Groth, Martin Wuttke, and more
TIFF festival favourite Ildikó Enyedi (On Body and Soul) explores time, nature, and memory through the eyes of a silent ginkgo tree in a German university garden. Across decades, its quiet presence links three scientists, including a reserved neurologist played with restraint by Hong Kong screen icon Tony Leung.
Hamnet
Directed by Chloé Zhao
Canadian Premiere
Starring Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn
Chloé Zhao, the Oscar-winning director of Nomadland, turns her lens to the personal life of William Shakespeare in this imagined account of the grief that followed the death of his young son. Hamnet quietly explores how loss can echo through creativity, suggesting that one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays may have been shaped by private heartbreak. With tender performances from Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley, the film traces the delicate ties between family, memory, and the art we leave behind.
No Other Choice
Directed by Park Chan-wook
North American Premiere
Starring Lee Byung Hun, Son Yejin, Park Hee Soon, Lee Sung Min, Yeom Hye Ran, Cha Seung Won
Visionary South Korean director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) twists the midlife-crisis narrative into a pitch-black, corporate thriller. Starring Lee Byung-hun and Son Yejin, the film tracks a desperate man's descent into criminality after he’s let go from the paper company he helped build.
Ky Nam Inn
Directed by Leon Le
World Premiere
Starring Lien Binh Phat, Do Thi Hai Yen, Ngo Hong Ngoc, Tran The Manh, Le Van Than, Ly Kieu Hanh
Vietnamese-American filmmaker Leon Le (Song Lang) returns with a tender, lyrical love story set in 1980s Saigon. Lien Binh Phat and Do Thi Hai Yen bring warmth and nuance to two lonely souls whose emotional connection slowly grows across the barriers of age, class, and postwar trauma.
The Sun Rises on Us ALl
Directed by Cai Shangjun
North American Premiere
Starring Xin Zhilei, Zhang Songwen, Feng Shaofeng
Cai Shangjun (People Mountain People Sea) crafts a quietly devastating drama about two former lovers haunted by a crime that neither can forget. With powerful turns by Zhang Songwen (The Knockout) and Xin Zhilei (Blossoms Shanghai), the film captures the emotional wreckage of unresolved guilt.
She Has no Name
Directed by Peter Ho-Sun Chan
North American Premiere
Starring Zhang Ziyi, Wang Chuanjun, Jackson Yee, Mei Ting, Zhao Liying, Lei Jiayin, and more
Peter Ho-Sun Chan (Comrades: Almost a Love Story) directs Zhang Ziyi in She Has No Name, a tense and emotionally charged crime drama based on a real murder case that shocked 1940s Shanghai. Zhang plays a woman accused of killing her abusive husband, a case that draws intense public scrutiny and exposes the harsh realities faced by women trapped in a patriarchal system. As the investigation unfolds, the film moves beyond the courtroom to explore the societal pressures, class divides, and moral ambiguities of a city in flux—where justice is as much about who you are as what you've done.
The Furious
Directed by Kenji Tanigaki
World Premiere
Starring Xie Miao, Joe Taslim, Yang Enyou, Yayan Ruhian, Brian Le, and more
Best known as the action choreographer behind SPL, Rurouni Kenshin, and Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, Kenji Tanigaki directs a blistering martial arts saga with a loaded cast including Joe Taslim, Yayan Ruhian, and Brian Le. Former child star Xie Miao leads as a father whose fists do the talking in a desperate search for his missing daughter.
Rental Family
Directed by HIKARI
World Premiere
Starring Brendan Fraser, Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, Shannon Mahina Gorman, Akira Emoto
HIKARI (37 Seconds) offers a sharp, soulful look at loneliness in Tokyo through the eyes of a foreign actor, played by Oscar-winner Brendan Fraser. Hired by a company that provides stand-in family members for clients in need, he plays everything from grieving uncle to estranged son. As the performances pile up, the lines between acting and identity begin to blur—until he’s forced to confront the one role he can’t script: himself.
A Pale View of Hills
Directed by Kei Ishikawa
North American Premiere
Starring Suzu Hirose, Fumi Nikaido, Yoh Yoshida, Camilla Aiko
Kei Ishikawa adapts Kazuo Ishiguro’s debut novel into a quietly layered meditation on memory, motherhood, and war. The story follows Etsuko, a Japanese woman living in England, as she reflects on her past in postwar Nagasaki and her complicated friendship with a troubled single mother. Moving between generations and geographies, the film traces the lingering shadows of trauma and the elusive nature of personal truth.
Debuting
Lucky Lu
Directed by Lloyd Lee Choi
North American Premiere
Starring Chang Chen, Fala Chen, Carabelle Manna Wei
In his feature debut, Lloyd Lee Choi crafts a tense, grounded portrait of an immigrant father trying to secure a future for his family in New York. Lu, a food delivery worker, has finally secured an apartment just in time for his wife and daughter’s arrival from China—until a string of setbacks threatens to unravel everything. A missing e-bike, financial precarity, and a housing scam collide in a desperate 48-hour race for survival.
Girl
Directed by Shu Qi
North American Premiere
Starring Roy Chiu, 9m88, Bai Xiao-Ying
Acclaimed actor Shu Qi (Millennium Mambo, Three Times) steps behind the camera for a raw and haunting directorial debut. Set in 1990s Taiwan, it follows Lin Xiaoli, a quiet preteen caught between abusive parents and the pressures of adolescence. When she befriends a rebellious classmate, their bond offers a fleeting escape—and a dangerous spark of resistance in a home where silence once meant safety.
Amoeba
Directed by Siyou Tan
World Premiere
Starring Ranice Tay, Nicole Lee, Shi-An Lim, Genevieve Tan, Jack Kao
Singaporean director Siyou Tan channels both teen angst and supernatural unease in this bold coming-of-age debut. Sixteen-year-old Xin Yu and her new friends form a secret pact at their elite girls' school, recording rebellious acts on camcorder as a way to reclaim power. But when the footage is discovered and an eerie presence begins to unsettle them, the line between solidarity and suspicion quickly unravels.
Left-Handed Girl
Directed by Shih-Ching Tsou
North American Premiere
Starring Shih-Yuan Ma, Janel Tsai, Nina Ye, Teng-Hui Huang
Produced and co-written by Sean Baker (The Florida Project), this moving family drama is directed by Shih-Ching Tsou, who captures the rhythms of Taipei’s night markets and single-mother households. Told from the perspective of five-year-old I-Jing, it explores a family's quiet collapse as her mother struggles with debt, and her older sister rebels against their confined world. Amid it all, I-Jing begins to question who she is—starting with the hand she writes with.
A Useful Ghost
Directed by Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke
North American Premiere
Starring Davika Hoorne, Apasiri Nitibhon, Wisarut Himmarat, Wanlop Rungkumjad, Wisarut Homhuan
After a tragic death in a family-run appliance factory, strange occurrences suggest the machines have become haunted. For one grieving man, it’s a sign his wife has returned. Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke blends absurdist humor with poignant grief as a vacuum cleaner becomes both a site of mourning and unexpected connection. As more appliances turn “possessed,” the film uncovers hidden tensions beneath the surface of a broken workplace and an even more fractured heart.
Explore our curated playlist “In Films & Theatre,” featuring conversations with standout voices from the worlds of cinema and stage, including exclusive interviews from past TIFF festivals!
More from Fête Chiniose
In this first roundup, we look at five standout films: The Sun Rises on Us All, Palimpsest: The Story of a Name, Lucky Lu, Amoeba, and Girl, each distinct in tone and style, yet deeply connected by emotional resonance and cultural reflection. These stories span geographies and genres: from Guangzhou’s aching past to the immigrant realities of New York, from the haunting intimacy of family trauma to the rebellion of young women pushing against systemic constraint. Some films confront generational wounds or buried identities; others capture moments of quiet survival or poetic self-reinvention.