Year of the Dragon
2025 · 12m · Canada
Directed by Giran Findlay Liu
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A Chinese Canadian immigrant mother sets out to deliver a birthday cake for her son, but the day unravels and forces her to confront the reality of his situation.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a birthday cake errand that becomes a portrait of immigrant precarity—structurally simple enough that it could bore you, but Findlay Liu finds subversion in restraint, letting the mother's small humiliations accumulate into something that refuses easy sentiment.
A formally composed chamber piece that inherits from the slow-cinema lineage of family portraiture; the film's control of pacing and framing—how it holds on faces and deferred moments—suggests a director thinking carefully about what cinema can say that dialogue cannot.
The entire film pivots on a single performance choice: how the mother's face registers the gap between what she's prepared to give and what the day actually allows her to deliver, and that micro-economy of restraint and vulnerability is what makes a 12-minute errand into something that stays with you.
Reviews
Beautifully lensed and brimming with tenderness, the delicate handling of a mother's love resonates deeply in Giran Findlay-Liu's poignant character study, starring Fiona Fu as a devoted mother making family rounds on her son's birthday.
Festivals
- Toronto International Film Festival (Short Cuts) 2025
- Canadian Screen Awards 2026, Best Live Action Short Drama
- Vancouver Asian Film Festival 2025, Best Canadian Short Film