Our series, “Shorts In Conversation,” makes a moment for cinema and dialogue. We invite an organization to curate a showing of films alongside their makers, followed by the directors in dialogue about their craft. The month of May we invite Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival again to curate this month’s screening.

Spring blossoms, forgotten umbrellas, May is here and so is the romance! Character tropes and fantasy endings aside, what are the powers of love and destiny that we can unlock within the romance genre? Featuring three short films from Reel Asian’s past, Requiem for a Romance (dir. Jonathan Ng, 2012), māyā (dir. Samyuktha Movva, 2022), and EITR (dir. Fateema Al-Hamaydeh Miller, 2023) asks us to reconsider the ways we allow ourselves to understand one-self and the connections we have with others.