2023
About the Program
Set in the 90s, a Korean single mother raises her young son in the suburbs of Canada determined to provide a better life for him than the one she left behind. Riceboy Sleeps tells a deeply-moving and universal story about family, migration, and belonging.
Anthony Shim is a Canadian actor and filmmaker based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Born in Seoul, South Korea, he moved with his family to the Vancouver suburb of Coquitlam in childhood.
His full-length feature debut as a director, Daughter, premiered at the 2019 Vancouver International Film Festival. His second feature film, Riceboy Sleeps, premiered in the Platform Prize competition at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, and was named the winner of the Platform Prize. It won the Toronto Film Critics Association’s Rogers Best Canadian Film Award, which comes with a $100,000 prize, considered the richest annual film prize in Canada. He won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Original Screenplay at the 11th Canadian Screen Awards in 2023 for Riceboy Sleeps.
From the Curating Team
History often neglects lesser-known events, characters, and artifacts, causing valuable cultural heritage to be lost in the torrent of time. To protect Taiwan’s subjectivity and include immigrants' experiences, we must document forgotten stories, fostering respect for diverse identities. These films honour forgotten stories and help build a holistic, inclusive perspective that values marginalized narratives.
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TAIWANfest Toronto is grateful to be held on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples, that is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. We acknowledge our privilege to be gathered here, and commit to work with and be respectful to the Indigenous peoples of this land while we engage in meaningful conversations of culture and reconciliation.