The official poster for Ba’s Book, Ashley Da-Lê Duong’s documentary opening the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival’s 30th edition on November 11, 2026.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Ashley Da-Lê Duong / Ba’s Book
Toronto’s Reel Asian International Film Festival opens its 30th edition on November 11 with Ba’s Book, a Canadian documentary in which Montréal filmmaker Ashley Da-Lê Duong turns her father’s account of war, displacement and migration into a film made with the relatives whose lives it describes. The festival runs in person through November 21, with selected online screenings available across Canada from November 16 to 29.
The starting point was a memoir written by Duong’s father, Anh Duong. Published as Dear Da-Lê: A Father’s Memoir of the Vietnam War and the Iranian Revolution, it recounts his childhood in Vietnam, his experiences while studying in Iran during the revolution and his eventual arrival in Canada. Before reading it, Duong had not known her father attended university in Iran, a period he had rarely discussed at home.
Duong travelled to Vietnam, where she met aunts and uncles and began work on recreations of episodes from the memoir. She later persuaded her father to join her on his first return to Vietnam since leaving at 22. Ba’s Book combines those staged scenes with conversations among relatives, who helped direct the recreations and corrected details as filming progressed.
In a September interview with The Canadian Press, Duong described filming a scene in which American soldiers tossed cigarettes to her father when he was a boy. The actor playing him picked them up immediately, but Anh Duong interrupted the take: he had waited until the soldiers left before collecting the cigarettes. He wanted them, but resented the soldiers and did not want them to watch him stoop to pick them up.
The 103-minute film was produced by Ina Fichman, with Duong also credited as a producer, through Intuitive Pictures and Da-Lê Films. Duong and Steven Sych share writing credits. Raised in Calgary and now based in Montréal, Duong previously directed A Time to Swim, which won a special jury prize in the documentary feature competition at the 2017 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival and Reel Asian’s Best First Feature Film award in 2018.
Ba’s Book had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 15. It subsequently screened at festivals including BFI London, Vancouver, Calgary and Windsor.
Founded in Toronto in 1997, Reel Asian has spent three decades presenting work by Asian and Asian diasporic filmmakers, including Canadian directors. This year’s anniversary programme revisits its first edition with a screening of Strawberry Fields, directed by Rea Tajiri and co-written by Canadian author Kerri Sakamoto. The film had its Canadian premiere at Reel Asian’s inaugural festival.
Other Canadian films in the 2026 programme include Winnipeg director Ian Bawa’s feature debut Strong Son; The Bryce Lee Story, a Vancouver Island-set coming-of-age film from Victoria filmmaker Arnold Lim; and Sunburn, Toronto director Serville Poblete’s story set in the city’s St. James Town neighbourhood.
Ba’s Book screens Wednesday, November 11, at 7:30 p.m. at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema in Toronto, followed by a Q&A with Duong. Doors open at 6:45 p.m. Opening-night gala tickets cost $35, and an afterparty follows at CBC Atrium with a suggested $10 donation at the door. Duong is also scheduled for a free artist talk on November 12 at 2 p.m. at 401 Richmond Street West.
Reel Asian will also make selected films available online across Canada from November 16 to 29. The festival has not confirmed whether Ba’s Book will be among those digital titles.
