A 25-year-old action-packed sports comedy will be screened for free at 7 p.m. on Tuesday (July 7) in the heart of downtown Toronto. The Reel Asian International Film Festival has partnered with Sankofa Square (1 Dundas Street East) to present Shaolin Soccer, which has an 89 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer.
“Catnip to those familiar with the conventions of Hong Kong martial arts movies,” wrote Geoff Pevere in a Toronto Star review after its release in 2001.
Steven Chow directed and stars in this good-hearted film, which is in Cantonese and Mandarin with English subtitles. It centres around a young Shaolin follower who reunites with his discouraged compatriots to form a soccer team. On the pitch, they use their martial arts skills to give their squad an edge in a competition for a $1-million prize.
Hence, the film’s tagline: Get ready to kick some grass!
Shaolin Soccer won six Hong Kong Film Awards in 2002, including Best Picture. Chow was named Best Director and Best Actor and was nominated for Best Screenplay.
Watch the trailer for Shaolin Soccer.
Chow made his mark as a comedic actor in Hong Kong in the 1990s before moving into directing. The presentation of Shaolin Soccer comes just as the FIFA World Cup tournament enters the quarter-finals.
The film will be preceded by Prajjwal Rajawat’s comedic short film, “BOLLYSINGH”. It’s about a 17-year-old struggling to reconcile cultural identity with conventional ideas of beauty.
Rajawat is a Toronto-based writer-director-artist whose films have been screened at TIFF, Next Wave, Reel Asian, and Toronto Youth Shorts.
For more information on the screenings, visit the Reel Asian International Film Festival website. The Toronto Spark is on Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
