Actor from Mississauga set to unveil his first film at a major Toronto film festival

While there’s no emotion more taxing, draining and harrowing than grief, it can bring both families and strangers together.

Especially when expressed simply and eloquently in film.

Liam Ma, a Vancouver-based and Mississauga-born actor who has starred in Streams Flow From a River, Young Werther and the Cruel Intentions TV series, has channelled his grief over his mother’s death into a short film that will premiere at the Reel Asian Film Festival in Toronto on Nov. 16. 

A Song For No One, which stars actor and musician Giullian Yao Gioiello (Sharper, Iron Fist), Felice Choi (Pachinko, Master of None) and Stella Kim (Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Alice), begins with Gene (Gioiello), an aspiring musician playing for anyone who happens to tune into the independent radio show he broadcasts from his Brooklyn apartment. 

As Gene plays, an unexpected listener who happens to be deaf picks up on the young artist’s vibrations from a radio powered by a stationary bike in the afterlife. By the end of the moving film, the woman–Gene’s deceased mother (Choi)–clutches the radio in her arms while her translator (Kim) bathes in a nearby stream. 

“My mom passed away in 2020, right at the beginning of COVID,” Ma tells INsauga.com. 

“What I want to come through [in the film] is the uncertainty of grief. You can find humour in grief and the deepest sorrows. There’s no timeline for grief. It’ll come up in the most spontaneous situations and I’ll think about my mom.” 

Ma, who lost his mother to cancer, says he came up with the idea for the short film about a year ago. 

“I wrote it without the intention of trying to produce it,” he says, adding that he turned to writing because acting doesn’t always allow performers to choose works that resonate deeply with them.  

“It’s full circle a year later and I get to share it with the world.” 

Ma says that emerging from the largely solitary writing process was intimidating, as a personal story was evolving into something that would be seen–and judged–by more and more people. 

“It’s so scary. You write something on your own and writing is a very solitary process. Then you see an actor say the words you wrote on your own. It’s a crazy journey.”

Ma says he was able to share early drafts with friends in the industry, as well as mentors he’s met through acting. 

“That [acting] world opened up so much to me. Having this community of people I could float a script by and take notes from on early drafts, they really championed things before I could believe it for myself.” 

Ma’s script about finding and sustaining connections with loved ones who are no longer with us took on new life when he was accepted into Reel Asian’s Unsung Voices program, a video production workshop that provides emerging filmmakers with the chance to “express themselves through film and media art, learn from professionals in the field, and to produce a distinct story for the screen.” 

Ma says the program allowed him to complete the film over the summer. 

“You get mentorship, guidance and funding. I was fortunate enough to get in and join five other filmmakers who went all the way from script to screen to having our premiere in November,” he says, adding that he got to work with editors and other first-time filmmakers. 

The experience was also invaluable because, unlike many young directors, Ma, who has a degree in engineering, never went to film school. 

“It was a lovely mix of people to meet with every week, share ideas, and learn the craft of filmmaking.” 

While filmmaking is new to Ma, the young actor says he’s always been creative and decided to pivot from science to acting shortly after graduating. 

“After I graduated, I got an agent and things moved really quickly and many great projects came early on,” he tells INsauga.com.

“With many actors, sometimes there’s a disconnect between the art and expression you want to put into the world because with the projects being offered, you don’t have a lot of agency and that’s why I started writing.” 

The film came together when Ma’s time with Unsung Voices overlapped with a stay in New York City, where the film was shot. While Ma says he knew he wanted Gioiello for the role, Choi and Kim were selected after auditioning for the roles of Gene’s mother, Sook-Ja and her interpreter, Han-Sol. 

Ma says that while he made the film, in part, for his mother, it’s also something he had to make for himself. 

Losing his mother when he was just 21 came, he says, as a terrible shock. The days leading up to her death, however, allowed him to connect both with her and his father and brother. 

“It was very quick,” he says, adding that he was living in Montreal when he found out about his mother’s grim diagnosis.

“The presence or possibility of death and imminent, irreversible change that’s coming, it allows you to go all-in on everything. You evaluate things and priorities and what you value. The last few weeks we had as a family were our strongest,” he says.  

Ma says he spent his mother’s final days with family in his childhood home in Mississauga. 

“She lived a wonderful life even though she was also young. So much would have been left unsaid if we didn’t have that time together,” he says. 

Unlike the character in Ma’s film, the director’s mother was not deaf, but he says he wanted to include a character who uses American Sign Language to explore how connection travels and is transmuted through different mediums. 

“His song goes through him and through the radio, finally reaching her. When she’s on her own, all she can feel is the vibrations through the radio. It’s her last and final connection to her son while she’s alone,” he says. 

He also says the move was inspired by Sound of Metal, the 2019 film about a musician coming to terms with profound hearing loss. 

“The deaf are a very underrepresented community in films. There was an accountability of doing it right without that lived experience. We had people teach our actors ASL,” he says. 

“There was something really interesting about her reliance on an interpreter to let her know how [her son] is and what he’s doing and having that communicated to her. When she’s on her own, it’s ‘Is he there, is he not there?’ There’s an understanding when his heartbeat comes through that he’s there.” 

As for the stationary bike, Ma says that “there’s always a stationary bike in an Asian household” and that it also represents futile motion–moving without ever pushing forward.

“We’re not going anywhere, but we’re powering something meaningful. It’s a bit of Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill. Every day in the afterlife, they do this. It’s productive in a way that reality isn’t productive.” 

He also says his background in engineering played a part in his directorial choices. 

“Even in my subconscious, I’m an engineer at heart. Where I arrived is so rooted in how I am as a person and my upbringing.” 

As for what’s next for the film, Ma says he’s excited for A Song For No One to reach a broader audience at its premiere at the TIFF Lightbox. After that, the film will likely travel through the festival circuit. 

“After we finished [the film], we had test screenings and a focus group and even in that small microcosm of people, it touched people and it moved people and even if it’s just one person who can see this story and relate to it, that’s the coolest thing. I’d love for it to continue to find an audience and maybe get distribution at some point. It’s been mine for so long. It’s meant to be for the audience now. I am excited for it to be in the world.”