Brighter Moon, A

“A Brighter Moon” is the story of Mikey and Valentine, two students from Hong Kong who have come to Toronto to study English at a “visa school.” Mikey and Valentine find themselves in a strange land where they must struggle to survive in a world without parents. The film attempts to show the foreign students in a sympathetic light, pointing to some of the problems they face in Canada. The title refers to an Asian proverb that translated roughly means, “The moon shines brighter in a foreign country.” “A Brighter Moon” was filmed entirely in Toronto’s Dundas Street Chinatown and presents its characters as real people without falling into the usual stereotypes of Asians seen in the West.