Toe The Line, written and directed by non-binary Canto storyteller Jay Wu, is a new thought-provoking short film that follows the story of Gloria Chau, a closeted teenage hockey player who rediscovers her sense of purpose when she loses her childhood dream: playing Olympic hockey. The film will be screening at the 2022 Inside Out 2S LGBTQ+ Film Festival this May 26th to June 5th, 2022. Gloria is torn between two worlds: the fun but cutthroat world of hockey where she gets to be loud and proud in her queerness, and the one at home where she’s a recluse, using music to cope with being forced into becoming someone she’s not. When she’s not on the ice, she’s got a guitar in her hands and a snapback on her head. Her mother Nancy, a stylish Hong Kong woman, spends sleepless nights worrying about Gloria’s failing grades. Underlying these tensions is a deep racial divide. She learns to use the power of her ancestors to seek a new purpose and redefine success for herself.
“Like many other kids of immigrants, in my teen years, I was forced to put my creative instincts aside so I could focus on “real” goals. These goals are often chosen for us before we are even born. TOE THE LINE has been an opportunity to look at how queerness complicates this all-too-common narrative. I’m so proud to bring this incredibly personal story of mine to life,” said TOE THE LINE writer, director, and editor, Jay Wu. “This film is based entirely on my upbringing in a small, white-dominated Canadian town, as well as my relationship with my mother, a fashionable and feminine Hong Kong woman.
With this film, I was able to show the idealized capitalist picture of success 2SLGBTQ+ kids of immigrants face every day while embracing a queer lens that is against the mainstream. This is a story where we as queer people of color aren’t defined by our queerness or our tragic home lives. I believe in a future filled with stories of racialized queer people don’t have to constantly be an inspiration – we are all messy and layered and complicated.”
Toe The Line is a 2022 Yorkton Golden Sheaf nominee for Scripted Short Film and a winner of the 2019 Breakthroughs Film Festival’s Pitch Competition. Most recently, the film screened at Montreal’s 2022 Image+Nation’s Festival Courts Queer Short Film Festival. TOE THE LINE stars Fiona Yang as Gloria Chau and Erin Tjam as Nancy Chau. The film is written and directed by Jay Wu, produced by Fonna Seidu and Kristina Wong, and with Cinematography by Dina Attalla and Ashley Iris Gill. 90% of the crew behind this film proudly consists of those who identify as both BIPOC and 2SLGBTQ+.
Source: Project Four
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