TCCFF2024 press conference: TCCFF founder Tery Wong Imamura centres a panel explaining the festival’s goals to media as they watch a video greeting from City of Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow.
In October, Toronto will play host to the second annual Toronto Chinese Canadian Film Festival, the delightful festival that pulled way above its weight in its inaugural year. The festival is the brainchild—and personal mission—of Tery Wong Imamura, a woman who knew almost nothing about films and filmmaking in 2023.
I say almost nothing because in 2017, Tery was a student in my Raindance Toronto screenwriting class. She registered for the course with an idea and a passion but zero clue about what went into a screenplay, how to develop interesting characters, how to write scintillating dialogue, and all the other intangibles of telling an evocative story.
Tery was very aware of how far back she was starting. She acknowledged that this was an incredible undertaking. And she knew that the odds were stacked against her, particularly for the sweeping epic she was trying to tell. And because she was then in her late 60s.
Yes, in August 2025, Tery celebrated her 75th birthday.
But she was determined to not just write her screenplay, but also to get it made into a film.
Long after the class ended, she kept writing drafts and getting feedback (from me), learning the craft and refining her story. But she also took to heart the understanding that filmmaking was a team sport, and so networking became her second mission.
Tery wormed her way into film festivals large and small across Toronto and stepped forward to introduce herself and her missions to award-winning Toronto filmmaker Ali Mashayekhi when he hosted a Raindance workshop series on Film Funding.
“My first impression of Tery was just passion and enthusiasm,” said Mashayekhi, founder of Landed Entertainments and co-founder of Boundless Imaginations. “She had the energy of a 20-year-old and the drive and wisdom of someone who’s been around long enough to know she’s about to try to do a very difficult task and she’s going to summon an army around her based on her passion and enthusiasm to get it done!”
Their creative relationship blossomed and within months, Mashayekhi agreed to help Tery fine-tune her screenplay and find funding for the feature film, a project that continues. Simultaneously, Mashayekhi decided to film a documentary of their shared journey, and separately, he mentored Tery to produce a short film that she both wrote and starred in despite never having worked as an actor before.
While continuing her networking efforts, Tery noted a striking absence on the Toronto film scene. Canada’s largest city lacked a Chinese film festival.
Greater Toronto had festivals celebrating Asian film broadly, South Asian film, Japanese film and Korean film, to name a few, but the city with one of the largest Chinese populations outside of Asia did not formally celebrate Chinese cinema and its intersection with North American culture.
Tery now had a third mission.
With no knowledge of how to produce a film festival, Tery shared her dream with anyone who would listen: community groups, government agencies, politicians, companies with sponsorship budgets, and filmmakers in Canada and China.
With generous help from several people, including festival co-chair Justin Poy, but largely on the back of this diminutive septuagenarian, the Toronto Chinese Film Festival (as it was originally known) rose from nothing to become five thrilling days of colourful cultural pageantry and a celebration of storytelling and filmmaking from around the world. This included a short film competition that awarded thousands of dollars in prizes to audience-favourite filmmakers.
[Disclosure: I run the short film competition and serve as advisor to the festival.]
“I was elated that our audience came back day after day to see our films this year,” Tery said at the close of the 2024 festival. “In the inaugural year, it’s very difficult to know how the audience will react, how many people will attend and what the general reception will be. I am very satisfied that we have the makings of a winning formula.”
With Tery’s personal goal of bigger and better, the 2025 Toronto Chinese Canadian Film Festival extends over seven days, sharing the best in Chinese cinema, including at least one world premiere. And the short film competition has expanded to include short documentaries, always with an eye toward short films that reflect and enrich the human experience in a family-friendly manner.
Tery is living proof of the power of a dream when coupled with determination and the firm belief “why not me”… very much a Raindancer.
The 2025 Toronto Chinese Canadian Film Festival runs October 18-24 at the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Toronto. Visit tccff.ca or follow them on Instagram at @tccff.official for details.
Five Lessons of Tery’s Journey
- Have a vision but be open to advice.
- Know your limitations to overcome them.
- Until you believe wholeheartedly no one else will.
- You are only as strong as the community around you.
- Passion and determination open doors reality has locked.
Randall C Willis is an award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker who teaches screenwriting at Raindance and Toronto’s George Brown College. He has also judged films, screenplays, and pitches for Raindance Live Option, Austin Film Festival, Lunenburg Doc Fest, and Landed Entertainment. Randall specializes in storytelling, helping writers of all media shape their ideas & voices, providing story analysis and coaching through his business So, What’s Your Story?, and consulting on story editing & story adaptation. He is currently developing a book—Tomorrow, I’ll be inspired. Reflections on muse-free creativity—to encourage people to live creative, passion-filled lives. His YouTube channel follows that journey.
