News

Documentaries lead the spring 2025 funding session of Bangkok-based Purin Pictures, representing four out of six selected titles that will receive a combined $160,000 in grants.

Three documentary winners, which receive a production grant of $15,000 each, comprise Arts Centre, in which veteran documentarian Tan Pin Pin continues her exploration of Singaporean identity; Woven Bamboo Neighbour by Indonesia’s Gama Triono, who turns to filmmaking through social work; and Vietnamese director Nhan Tran’s And The Mountains Echoed, which follows three generations of Hmong women as they navigate life between village and city.

The fourth documentary winner, Baby Jackfruit, Baby Guava from Vietnam,...

Thailand Creative Culture Agency (Thacca) has announced a bumper lineup of 86 projects as recipients of a new funding scheme designed to support the development and production of the local creative industry and strengthen the country’s soft power on the global stage.

In collaboration with Thailand’s Ministry of Culture and Film Industry Subcommittee, the funding scheme will disburse $6.4m (THB220m) to the selected projects, which include films, series, documentaries and animation.

Scroll down for list of recipients

The majority of the funding – $5.8m (THB200m) – is allocated for content production, while $300,000 (THB10m) each will be allotted to...

Fran Borgia of Singapore’s Akanga Film Asia (“Tiger Stripes”), who’s at the Venice Film Festival this week with Yeo Siew Hua’s Golden Lion contender “Stranger Eyes,” has unveiled two new projects on his production company’s fast-growing slate, including a limited series from Yeo, whose “A Land Imagined” won the Locarno Film Festival’s top prize in 2018.

“We are excited to announce that we are expanding our horizons beyond Southeast Asia, embarking on ambitious new projects in collaboration with partners from China, Japan and India,” Borgia told Variety. “These international co-productions present new challenges and opportunities, allowing us to push creative boundaries and expand our artistic skills.”

Described by the producer as “a captivating and innovative addition to [Yeo’s] body of work,” the Singaporean filmmaker’s seven-part psychological police thriller series “The Fundamentals” delves into small-town paranoia, blending science, cultism and procedural elements. Created by Yeo and written by Yeo,...

The Philippines accounts for four out of five projects selected for the spring 2024 selection of Bangkok-based film fund Purin Pictures, comprising $140,000 in production grants.

The four projects from the Philippines are from directors Mario Cornejo, Arvin Belarmino, Joanne Cesario and Joseph Mangat, with the fifth by Riar Rizaldi from Indonesia.

My Neighbour The Gangster by Cornejo is described as a funny and moving recollection of the filmmaker’s own childhood living next door to the most famous gangster in the Philippines; Ria, by rising director Belarmino, explores the world of Filipino punk; and Invisible Labour, by activist Cesario, addresses the...

Hong Kong’s Eye Catcher Global (Ecg) will expand into industry screenings and add Asian new director awards for its 2024 edition, following last year’s inaugural event that focused on international pitching.

The second edition is scheduled to run June 20-23 at Soho House in Hong Kong. The new Industry Screening programme will curate up to eight independent film projects from Asia. All will be works-in-progress, with at least a first-cut available for international and local industry delegates to view.

Julien Rejl, artistic director of Cannes’ Directors Fortnight, will attend the event as jury president of two new awards created...

Bangkok-based film fund Purin Pictures will disburse $140,000 to three Philippines and one Indonesian film as part of its fall grants.

The Purin committee has chosen three fiction and one documentary projects for production support and one documentary project for post-production support.

“The Remotes” is John Torres’ first fiction film after two decades of making documentaries. “Filipinana” by Rafael Manuel is expanded from a short film and was recently awarded at the Asian Project Market in Busan. “Jaguar” by Dean Colin Marcial is an urban thriller that straddles the gap between independent and mainstream genre cinema. Rounding out the selection are two documentaries, “Bariles” by Sheryl Rose Andes and “Planet of Love” by Ika Wulandari, that examine marginalized livelihoods in the Philippines and Indonesia respectively.

Production Grants

“The Remotes.” Director: John Torres. Producer: John Torres. Production Company: Los Otros (Philippines). Two sisters with superpowers race against time to track a voice that controls human avatars,...

Tiffcom, the rights market that sits alongside the Tokyo International Film Festival, is celebrating its return to an in-person format for the first time since 2019, with a move to another venue and the launch of the new Tokyo Story Market.

The three-day market (Oct. 25-27) will relocate from Ikkebukuro to the Tokyo Metropolitan Industrial Trade Center (aka Hamamatsucho-Kan) in Hamamatsucho district. Organizers say that makes it easily accessible from the airports and Shinkansen stations and puts the market closer to the film festival which relocated in 2021 to the Hibiya-Ginza area.

The Tokyo Story Market will specialize in business negotiations for film and audiovisual adaptations of original works (stories) including manga (Japanese comics) and novels. It is expected to include the participation of leading Japanese publishers including Kadokawa, Kodansha, Shueisha and Shogakukan. The buyers are expected to be audiovisual producers.

The Tokyo Gap Financing Market will be held for the fourth time,...

The financing and development platform at Tiffcom will take place in person for the first time.

The Tokyo Gap-Financing Market (Tgfm) has revealed the 15 projects selected for financing and development at Tiffcom, the content market of Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF).

The 4th edition of Tgfm will take place in-person for the first time from October 25-27, having launched during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 when all industry activity took place online.

Scroll down for full list of titles

Projects include The Fox King by Malaysia’s Woo Ming Jin, whose revenge thriller Stone Turtle premiered in competition at Locarno in...

Yeo Siew Hua, the Singaporean director whose “A Land Imagined” won the Locarno Film Festival’s top prize in 2018, has cast acclaimed Taiwanese actors Lee Kang-Sheng and Wu Chien-Ho (“A Sun”) in his new “Stranger Eyes.”

The film, a thriller with domestic surveillance at its core, is currently shooting. It is set to wrap post-production by early 2024 and start a festival run thereafter. International sales are handled by France’s Playtime.

The Golden Horse-nominated Wu plays Darren, a struggling young father whose baby daughter has gone missing. When mysterious footage appears of his private and intimate life, Darren suspects that his neighbor Goh, a supermarket supervisor, is the voyeur linked to his daughter’s disappearance. Goh is portrayed by Lee, who is best-known for his three-decade-plus collaboration with Golden Lion-winning director Tsai Ming-liang. Increasingly frantic, Darren takes it upon himself to stalk Goh, meaning that the hunted becomes hunter.

“It...

Beijing Basks In Festival Return

The Argentina-Chile coproduction “The Punishment,” directed by Matias Bize, was named best feature over the weekend at the close of the Beijing International Film Festival.

Mexico’s Lila Avilés won the Tiantan Award for best director for her film “Totem.” Antonia Zegers and Line Renaud shared the best actress award for “The Punishment” and “Driving Madeleine,” respectively.

The best actor award went to Xin Baiqing for Chinese movie “The Shadowless Tower.” The film, which premiered in February in Berlin, was the numerical winner. With the best screenplay, music, cinematography and artistic contribution awards, it won a total of five prizes.

Chinese actor and director Tian Zhuangzhuang collected the best supporting actor award. Mexican, Montserrat Maranon earned the best supporting actress prize.

The ceremony wrapped up a festival at which organizers claimed to have played 1,488 films. International guests included Israel’s Nadav Lapid, Germany’s Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck...

The debut feature of Duong Dieu Linh and a documentary from Quang Nong Nhat selected.

Bangkok-based film fund Purin Pictures has selected five projects from Southeast Asia as the recipients of its spring 2023 funding round, which will receive a combined $120,000 in production grants.

The titles include Duong Dieu Linh’s feature debut Don’t Cry, Butterfly and Quang Nong Nhat’s documentary Baby Jackfruit, Baby Guava.

“Over the past several years, Vietnam in particular has proved to be a bright spot in the region for cinema,” said Aditya Assarat, co-director of Purin Pictures. “You could say we are in the...

Filmmakers had called for a boycott over the rule change.

The organisers behind Thailand’s Suphannahong National Film Awards have dropped a rule that would effectively disqualify independent features from nomination following a major backlash.

A recent rule change by the National Federation of Motion Pictures and Contents Associations (Mpc) stated that theatrical releases in five regions of Thailand and a minimum of 50,000 cinema admissions were required for a film to be considered for nomination. These regions include Bangkok, Chiangmai (the north), Chonburi (the east), Nakhon Ratchasima (the northeast) and Nakhon Si Thammarat (the south).

It meant that, earlier this week,...

Four winning pitches were announced on Tuesday from the Mekong Region Netflix x Purin Pictures Short Film Camp.

The winning projects were revealed as: “Ponay” from Thailand, “The Witness,” from Laos, “Termite Life,” from Thailand, and “Sad Diva Lands on the Moon,” from Myanmar.

The 10-day workshop was held this year for the second time and involved 12 teams of directors and producers- six teams from Thailand, four from Myanmar, two from Cambodia, and one from Laos.

The workshop was financed from Netflix’s Creative Equity Fund, which also championed a similar exercise “Take 10” in India. The Southeast Asian camp was operated by Purin Pictures, a non-profit organization backed by the Purin Foundation, that also gives grants to Southeast Asian filmmakers.

The proposed films covered topics ranging from family drama and LGBTQ issues, to political repression and the deconstruction of identity.

The participants were mentored by professional filmmakers from the Mekong...

Prolific Singapore-based production company Akanga Film Asia, led by producer Fran Borgia, has revealed a robust film slate, including several global co-productions.

Borgia and filmmaker Yeo Siew Hua teamed on 2018 film “A Land Imagined,” which reaped a rich haul of awards around the world, including top prizes at Locarno, Golden Horse, El Gouna, Pingyao, Singapore and Valladolid. They have now re-teamed on “Stranger Eyes,” which is selected at the ongoing Venice Production Bridge’s gap financing market.

The film follows master of surveillance Inspector Goh, who, as he keeps a close eye on a suspected credit card thief, is drawn into the suspect’s world and starts to see himself in the skin of the perpetrator. As it sets him to question the true meaning of his work, Goh is tasked to track down a serial voyeur on the loose who has been videotaping people’s most private moments.

“It...

Projects selected from 15 countries.

South Korea’s Busan International Film Festival (Biff) has unveiled the 29 titles selected for the 2022 Asian Project Market (Apm).

The film financing event that runs as part of Biff’s Asian Contents and Film Market will return in-person from October 9-11, after taking place as a hybrid event last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

From this year, Apm has excluded non-Asian projects to provide more focused support for Asian projects, which must be submitted by directors who have made at least one short or full-length feature as well as producers who have been involved with at least one feature.

Welcome back to another edition of International Insider. This week, you’ve got me, Jesse Whittock, taking you through the big stories from beyond the U.S. shores.

Indian Incentive

Luring them in: Indian TV production is one of the big, developing international narratives of 2022, and the country is desperate to attract more overseas players to its shores following a difficult pandemic. Our Contributing Editor for Asia, Liz Shackleton, took a deep dive into a new 30 cash rebate that the country’s Information & Broadcasting Ministry has rolled out over recent months. Here’s the science bit: the incentive will reimburse up to 30 of qualifying expenditure up to about INR20M. An additional 5 can be accessed for productions with larger Indian crews. To be eligible, productions must get I&b approval and spend a minimum INR25M. There are several other caveats, but Liz explains it better than I can,...

Busan International Film Festival (Biff) has announced the 29 projects selected for this year’s Asian Project Market (Apm), a core strand of the festival’s industry activities, including new works from Thailand’s Aditya Assarat, China’s Wang Qi, Vietnam’s Le Bao and Myanmar’s Maung Sun, whose producer Ma Aeint is currently in prison in Yangon.

Ma Aeint, who previously produced Maung Sun’s award-winning Money Has Four Legs, was recently sentenced to three years in jail with hard labor by Myanmar’s military junta, which took over the country in a brutal coup in early 2021. She was accused of “causing fear, spreading fake news or agitating against government employees”. She is attached as a producer to Maung Sun’s new project, Future Laobans, described as a drama about the “international dimension of organized crime.”

Assarat, an award-winning Thai director, is returning to feature-length directing after focusing on producing,...

The Asian Project Market, the film financing event attached to the Busan festival’s Asian Contents & Film Market, will return this year as an in-person event. To increase the focus on regional projects it has selected 29 titles and excluded those from outside Asia.

The Apm will be held at the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center (Bexco) and run Oct. 9-11, 2022. The Busan International Film Festival runs Oct 5-14.

Organizers say that thematically the selection – made from 288 projects submitted – highlights women filmmakers and the return of a handful of Busan festival alumni. The selection also finds house room for nine projects from South Korea.

The Apm prizes awarded to be awarded on Oct. 11 will also be “more diverse.” They include a newly-established Taicca Award and the Vipo Award, sponsored by Taiwan Creative Content Agency and Japan’s Visual Industry Promotion Organization respectively, which will pay out 10,000 to support film development. And...

An animated feature is awarded for the first time.

Bangkok-based film fund Purin Pictures has selected five projects from Southeast Asia as the recipients of its spring 2022 session, which will receive a combined 175,000 grants for production and post-production.

The production grants are awarded to Demie Dangla’s documentary Magnetic Letters and Carl Joseph Papa’s animated feature The Missing, both from the Philippines, while the post-production grants are presented to Sorayos Prapapan’s Arnold Is A Model Student from Thailand, Daniel Hui’s Small Hours Of The Night from Singapore and Tonny Trimarsanto’s documentary One Big Sumba Family from Indonesia.

Fund for Southeast Asian projects is handing out grants to two fiction and two documentary projects in latest funding round.

Bangkok-based film fund Purin Pictures is awarding grants to two fiction and two documentary projects, which will receive a combined $105,000, under its spring 2021 funding round.

Production grants are being awarded to Indonesian filmmaker Riar Rizaldi documentary Monisme and two dramas – Malaysian director Chia Chee Sum’s Oasis Of Now and Singaporean filmmaker Nelicia Low’s Pierce (see full details below).

Vietnamese filmmaker Ha Le Diem’s documentary Children Of The Mist has been awarded a post-production grant. It was previously...

The Asia Pacific Screen Academy honoured regional filmmakers at a special presentation on Australia’s Gold Coast last night (November 26).

Thailand-based producer Soros Sukhum took home the 2020 Fiapf Award for Outstanding Achievement in Film in the Asia Pacific region. Sukhum is well regarded for work in the Thai indie space, launching the careers of Aditya Assarat, Sivaroj Kongsakul, Anocha Suwichakornpong, and Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit. His latest credit is Memoria, the English language debut for director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, starring Tilda Swinton.

Hosted by Iranian born Australian presenter Leila McKinnon, the ceremony also awarded its Young Cinema Award to Indian filmmaker Akshay Indikar for Chronicle Of Space (Sthalpuran), with a Special Mention going to Australian Stephen Maxwell Johnson for High Ground.

The Apsa Presentation Ceremony marked the end of the 2020 Apsa Forum, a week-long series of panels and roundtable events delivered both in person and digitally, with participants from 18 countries.

The MPA Apsa Academy Film Fund...

Soros Sukhum received the outstanding achievement prize.

Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir and Filipino producer Bianca Balbuena are among the winners at the 2020 Asia Pacific Screen Awards (Apsa), which held a special award presentation in Australia’s Gold Coast.

The pair were two of four recipients of $25,000 each through the Apsa Academy Film Fund which awards projects at script development stage.

In receiving the grant towards her project All Before You, Jacir becomes the first filmmaker to receive the Apsa grant on two occasions. She was previously awarded for 2017 film Wajib, which premiered at Locarno, winning five prizes including the special prize for best film.

Thai producer Soros Sukhum was Thursday honored with the Fiapf Award for outstanding achievement in film in the Asia Pacific region. The prize was presented as part of a heavily revamped Asia Pacific Screen Awards ceremony, at Gold Coast in Australia’s Queensland.

The Young Cinema Award was won by Indian filmmaker Akshay Indikar for “Chronicle of Space” (“Sthalpuran”), with a special mention going to Australia’s Stephen Maxwell Johnson for “High Ground.”

Earlier this year the Apsa Awards event’s future had seemed deeply clouded due to twin hits from financial problems and the coronavirus. Normally, a dozen prizes are awarded to artistic films from across the vast Unesco-defined Asia region.

In June, the Brisbane City Council and its offshoot Brisbane Marketing, notified Apsa organizers that they would not be able to fund the event due to the impact of the coronavirus on the city’s budget.

The...

Edmund Yeo was born in Singapore in 1984, and graduated from Waseda University. His short films “Kingyo” premiered at the Venice Film Festival 2009; “Inhalation” won the Sonje Award at the Busan International Film Festival in 2010. His debut feature “River of Exploding Durians” premiered in competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival 2014. In 2017, he returned to Tokyo with two films, “Yasmin-san” and “AQÉRAT” (We the Dead), with latter earning him the Best Director Award. “Malu” is his latest film.

On the occasion of “Malu” screening at Tokyo International Film Festival, we talk with him about the story that takes place in both Malaysia and Japan, the cinematography and the editing, working with Masatoshi Nagashe and Sherlyn Seo, and other topics.

The story you present in “Malu” is very interesting. What was the inspiration behind it and why did you choose to have it unfold in both Malaysia and Japan?

The inspiration behind...

Projects to receive grants include three from Vietnam, two from Thailand and one from Indonesia.

Bangkok-based film fund Purin Pictures has announced its grantees for autumn 2020, including three projects from the burgeoning Vietnamese film industry.

The three Vietnamese projects, which will receive production grants, include Ash Mayfair’s Skin Of Youth, Pham Thien An’s Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell, produced by Singapore’s Jeremy Chua, and Minh Quy Truong’s Viet And Nam, produced by Bradley Liew in the Philippines.

The fourth project to receive a Purin Pictures production grant is Thai filmmaker Aekaphong Saransate’s documentary, Breaking The Cycle,...

Two feature film projects and three documentaries are to receive grant funding from the Bangkok-based Purin Pictures fund. Unusually, the fund made no post-production disbursements.

Receiving $15,000 each, the three features are: Indonesian director Mouly Surya’s “This City Is A Battlefield”; and The Maw Naing’s “The Women,” a Myanmar-set drama about a female protest movement.

Collecting $15,000 each, the documentaries are Singapore director Chan Sze Wai’s “I Am Walking”; Miko Revereza’s experimental documentary “Nowhere Near,” about a film director returning to his native Philippines; and “A Man Like Me,” a portrait of writer Yeng Pway Ngon, directed by Singapore’s Jiekai Liao.

“If there was a common theme we saw across many of the applications, it was the struggle of the marginalized against the mainstream and the exploited against the powerful. It’s interesting how the effects of widening inequality in many Southeast Asian countries is finding its way into our films,...

Two fiction and three documentary projects from Southeast Asia will receive production grants from Bangkok-based fund.

Bangkok-based film fund Purin Pictures has unveiled the two fiction and three documentary projects that will receive production grants in its spring 2020 funding round.

The two fiction projects, which receive $30,000 each, are The Women, directed by Myanmar’s The Maw Naing, about a group of female factory workers protesting unjust treatment, and This City Is A Battlefield, from Indonesia’s Mouly Surya, a period drama set in the aftermath of the Second World War (see full details below).

The three documentary projects, which receive grants of $15,000 each,...

Calamity Films, the UK producer behind Judy, for which Renée Zellweger recently won an Oscar, has named Sam Gordon as its head of development. Gordon joins from BBC Films, where he worked as a development executive on projects including recent Sundance pic Herself and the upcoming People Just Do Nothing: Big In Japan, as well as Judy which the BBC backed. He also had prior roles at Magnolia Mae Films and Baby Cow, working on Stan & Ollie and Philomena. At Calamity, Gordon will report to founder David Livingstone and will work across film and TV projects.

The fourth Seafic lab, which nurtures Southeast Asian films, will welcome filmmakers including Palme d’Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul for its 2020 edition. Five projects will take part, including a new feature from Locarno Golden Leopard-winning A Land Imagined producer Fran Borgia, and Locarno-winning The Science Of Fictions producer Yulia Evina Bhar. The teams this year hail from Indonesia,...

“Scales” (aka “Sayidat Al Bahr”), directed by Saudi Arabian first-time filmmaker, Shahad Ameen, was named as the best film in the Asian feature competition at the 30th edition of the Singapore International Film Festival.

The tale of a young girl who defies her village’s harsh and chauvinistic traditions to prove her worth, collected the festival’s Silver Screen Award on Saturday at a ceremony held in the National Museum of Singapore.

The blue carpet event welcomed local figures Boo Junfeng, Royston Tan, and Tan Pin Pin, as well as film industry officials Joachim Ng, and Howie Lau. Chinese acting star Yao Chen and Japanese director Miike Takashi were also present to pick up special awards. Yao spiced up proceedings, with a throw-away comment: “recently I have been able to play several characters who found the strength to go after the love and sex that they wanted.”

Anthony Chen, whose...

Kongdej Jaturanrasamee completed film studies at King Mongkut Institute of Technology. A director and screenwriter, who worked also as a teacher, copywriter and restaurant owner. Appreciated for psychological sensibility and the ability to transfer ephemeral emotional states into the screen. His films were presented and awarded at numerous international festivals, In 2012 received the Grand Prix at Five Flavours for “P-047”.

Jennis Oprasert was born in 2000, singer and actress. She belongs to the supergroup of idols BNK48, she was in the first line-up of the band founded in 2017. At the age of eight she acted in the horror film “The 8th Day”, for which she was nominated for the Suphannahong National Film Awards. For her leading role in Kongdej Jaturanrasamee’s “Where We Belong” she received the Marie Claire Asia Award for emerging talent.

Soros Sukhum was born in Bangkok, graduate of film production at the Faculty of Communication Arts of the University of Rangsit.

Bangkok-based fund is handing out four production and one post-production grants in autumn 2019 funding round.

New projects from Indonesia’s Edwin and the Philippines’ Lav Diaz are among the five grant recipients in Bangkok-based film fund Purin Pictures’ latest funding round.

Purin Pictures announced that four projects – three fiction and one documentary – would receive production grants, while one fiction project would receive a post-production grant of $50,000 in post-production services.

The four production grant recipients include Edwin’s Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash, Laz Diaz’s When The Waves Are Gone, Indonesian filmmaker Makbul Mubarak’s Autobiography and Children Of The Mist,...

Bangkok-based fund is handing out four production and one post-production grants in autumn 2019 funding round.

New projects from Indonesia’s Edwin and the Philippines’ Lav Diaz are among the five grant recipients in Bangkok-based film fund Purin Pictures’ latest funding round.

Purin Pictures announced that four projects – three fiction and one documentary – would receive production grants, while one fiction project would receive a post-production grant of $50,000 in post-production services.

The four production grant recipients include Edwin’s Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash, Laz Diaz’s When The Waves Are Gone, Indonesian filmmaker Makbul Mubarak’s Autobiography and Children Of The Mist,...

The annual celebration of the short film provides a window on Southeast Asian cinema

Melaka, 25 September – The SeaShorts Film Festival 2019 kicked off its five-day run in Melaka on Wednesday with an opening night showing of Ten Years Thailand and an appearance by one of the film’s directors, Aditya Assarat.

The anthology features four stories by different Thai filmmakers, each envisioning their homeland a decade onwards from the military coup of 2014. Aditya joined in a question and answer session with his Malaysian counterpart, Amir Muhammad.

The event served as a taste of the Festival to come, which continues through to Sunday. Now in its third edition, the annual celebration of short films from Southeast Asia and beyond promises to be a diverse treat for movie buffs.

In the competition section, a shortlist of 26 entries from more than 350 submitted will be in the running for the top two prizes. Venice Film...

Filming of the critically acclaimed, Bangkok-born helmer's new drama kicked off on 19 August. Award-winning independent filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul is finally working on his eighth solo feature film, the first to be shot outside Thailand. His most notable recent production was a segment included in the dystopian anthology film Ten Years Thailand, based on a similar format revolving around Hong Kong (made in 2015) and shown in the Special Screenings section at Cannes last year. The movie, directed by Weerasethakul with Aditya Assarat, Wisit Sasanatieng and Chulayarnon Siriphol, offered four different, speculative takes on a dystopian Thailand in 2028. Filming for his new project, entitled Memoria, began on 19 August and will continue for eight weeks. The shoot will take place in the mountain village of Pijao, and in and around the capital city of Colombia, Bogotá. The idea for...

In order to increase the impact of its industry support efforts Locarno Film Festival is doubling down on – and in fact trebling the duration of – its Open Doors activities. Instead of an annually revolving country focus, starting this year the section will pick projects, producers and film-makers from one region for three consecutive years, before moving on.

South-East Asia, plus Mongolia, is the first region to benefit from the extended spotlight. The region is diverse and there is much ground to cover, especially as several South-East Asian countries are now reaching a level of economic and technological development that is allowing the film and TV industries to accelerate.

“South-East Asia has produced some of the greatest directors of our time, and now a new wave of talent, of young people with astonishing creative energy, is emerging today despite all the obstacles,” says Lili Hinstin, Locarno’s artistic director.

A total...

SeaShorts Film Festival is set to debut in Malacca this 25th to 29th September. Now in its third edition, the annual affair will host as usual a fresh line-up of works from emerging and established directorial talents in Southeast Asia and beyond for a celebration of short film.

An initiative of Next New Wave, visitors can expect a weeklong series of film screenings, forums, masterclasses, and other activities associated with movie production. SeaShorts’ diversity is evident in SExpress, a presentation of guest programmes specially curated to showcase the many local filmmaking scenes of the region. Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia are the ten countries in the spotlight.

The Festival will also once again see directors vying for glory in two competition categories. Venice Film Festival Golden Lion winner, Lav Diaz of the Philippines, heads the jury for the SeaShorts Award, which recognises Southeast Asian short films.

Rountable event to include panels, workshops and spotlights on Thai studio Gdh and ’Manta Ray’ director Phuttipong Aroonpheng.

Bangkok-based film fund Purin Pictures is launching an industry event, Roundtable (July 4-7), which will run concurrently with the Bangkok Asean Film Festival.

While the festival will focus on screenings, Roundtable will host seminars, workshops and spotlights, with the two events aiming to complement each other by offering a range of activities focused on Southeast Asian cinema.

Highlights include a spotlight on Thai studio Gdh, which has credits including international hit Bad Genius, and Thai director Phuttipong Aroonpheng, whose 2018 drama Manta Ray...

The Locarno Festival’s Open Doors platform dedicated to promoting cinema in areas where filmmaking is especially tough, has unveiled the 8 projects, directors, and producers from 7 countries in South-East Asia and Mongolia who will make the trek to Switzerland for networking and training opportunities.

The selected projects include “The Thonglor Kids” by Thai director Aditya Assarat, produced by Fran Borgia, who also produced last year’s Golden Leopard winner “A Land Imagined,” by Singapore’s Yeo Siew Hua (pictured).

Vietnamese director Chuyen Bui Thac, whose second feature “Adrift,” set in Hanoi, premiered at Venice in 2009, will be attending the Asian cinema incubator with his latest project “Glorious Ashes” centered on the hardships and love lives of three women in a poor coastal village.

Locarno’s Open Doors program this year is entering a new three-year cycle dedicated to Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Mongolia.

The event’s co-production platform,...

Eight projects for the Hub, nine producers for the Lab.

Open Doors, the industry sidebar of Locarno Film Festival dedicated to Southeast Asian film, has selected eight projects for its Hub and nine upcoming producers to participate in its Lab for the 2019 edition.

The projects chosen for the Hub include The Thonglor Kids from Thai director Aditya Assarat, produced by Fran Borgia, who also produced last year’s Golden Leopard winner at Locarno, A Land Imagined.

Vietnamese director Chuyen Bui Thac, whose second feature Adrift premiered at Venice in 2009, will attend with his project Glorious Ashes.

Seven countries are represented across the eight projects,...

South East Asian film fund, Purin Pictures has again handed out $170,000 of finance for a fistful of movie projects. The Spring grants include production support for three feature films, production support for a documentary, and post production aid for another documentary.

Launched in 2017 and operating an open submissions process for the second year, the fund received an increased number of funding applications. “The fact that we continue to see many strong projects from the Philippines and Singapore in particular tells us that these two countries have the most solid support structures for independent filmmaking within the region,” said fund director Aditya Assarat.

The fund will provide production grants of $30,000 each to: drama “Anatomy of Time,” to be directed by Thailand’s Jakrawal Nilthamrong, sand produced by Mai Meksawan; “Ajoomma,” a dramedy about a Korean TV obsessed widow, directed by He Shuming and produced by Tan Si En; “Yuni,” directed by...

Kamila Andini’s Yuni and Jakrawal Nilthamrong’s Anatomy Of Time among five projects to receive grants.

Bangkok-based film fund Purin Pictures has selected five projects to receive grants in its spring 2019 funding round.

Three fiction and one documentary projects will receive production grants of $30,000 each, while one documentary has been selected for the post-production grant, which comes with $50,000 worth of post-production services.

The four projects to receive production grants include:

Anatomy Of Time – director: Jakrawal Nilthamrong, producer: Mai Meksawan (Thailand/France/Netherlands/Germany)

A drama shifting between the present and the past, following Mam, a general’s wife, as...

Little did Ng Ka-leung knew back in 2015 when he was producing the omnibus “Ten Years”, of the impact his film would have, both as a separate entity and, as of now, as a project that has Thailand, Japan and Taiwan producing their own editions of the movie, following in the steps of the original Hong Kong one. This time, we will deal with the Thai one, which is comprised of four segments that implement an approach much more surrealistic than the original one.

“Ten Years Thailand” is screening at Udine Far East Film Festival

Aditya Assarat’s “Sunset” deals with censorship, in a world where the concept has been fully accepted by the public, and is actually implemented by a kind of a thought police.

Assarat shows the ridiculousness of the concept, by having the people in charge forcing a gallery owner to take some photos down for a truly mundane reason.

Little did Ng Ka-leung knew back in 2015 when he was producing the omnibus “Ten Years”, of the impact his film would have, both as a separate entity and, as of now, as a project that has Thailand, Japan and Taiwan producing their own editions of the movie, following in the steps of the original Hong Kong one. This time, we will deal with the Thai one, which is comprised of four segments that implement an approach much more surrealistic than the original one.

“Ten Years Thailand” is screening at Five Flavours Festival

Aditya Assarat’s “Sunset” deals with censorship, in a world where the concept has been fully accepted by the public, and is actually implemented by a kind of a thought police.

Assarat shows the ridiculousness of the concept, by having the people in charge forcing the gallery owner to take some photos down for a truly mundane reason.

Projects include three Southeast Asian narrative features and two documentaries.

Bangkok-based film fund Purin Pictures has unveiled the five Southeast Asian projects, including three narrative features and two documentaries, that will receive grants in its autumn 2018 funding round.

The three features, which will be awarded $30,000 production grants, include Pham Ngoc Lan’s Cu Li Never Cries, a co-production between Vietnam and the Philippines, along with projects from Singapore’s Chen-Hsi Wong and Nicole Midori Woodford, the latter with a Singapore-Japan co-production.

The two documentaries, which will receive post-production grants of $50,000 in services, are Cambodian filmmaker Kavich Neang’s Last Night...

Japanese multihyphenate Kiko Sugino (“Snow Woman”) will produce an omnibus film directed by seven women from Asian countries, the project’s executive producer Kousuke Ono (“Kinki”) revealed at the Platform Busan forum on Sunday. Ono was participating in a discussion on Asian omnibus films moderated by Busan International Film Festival Asian cinema programmer Kim Young-woo. Another omnibus film, “21st Century Girl,” produced by U-ki Yamato (“Drowning Love”), is a collection of 14 eight-minute shorts by women directors, including one by Yamato herself. The film will have its world premiere at the Tokyo Film Festival in November.

At the discussions, producers and directors of omnibus films spoke about the challenges of making and distributing what is effectively a niche sub-genre in Asia. The current trend of producing omnibus films in Asia was kicked off by 2015’s “Ten Years,” a deeply political collection of five shorts that envisaged Hong Kong 10 years in the...

The first “10 Years” film, released in 2015, was a grungy, guttural response to the Umbrella Movement civic protest, when for 79 days in late 2014, pro-democracy campaigners blocked the streets of downtown Hong Kong.

The uprising failed to achieve its ends, and was ultimately erased by government.

But as reality overtook fiction, it sharpened the ultra-low-budget anthology in which five filmmakers had set themselves the challenge of imagining how their home territory would evolve in 10 years. The result was both dystopian and quirky. Major prizes and box office far in excess of the $90,000 original budget suggested that the concept had legs.

Felix Tsang, of Golden Scene — which had handled international sales — along with former Fox executive Lorraine Ma, and Japan’s Miyuki Takamatsu, saw the opportunity to implant the concept in other parts of Asia. Working with lawyers and sounding out like-minded producers, they set up Ten Years Studio, and took two years...

Little did Ng Ka-leung knew back in 2015 when he was producing the omnibus “Ten Years”, of the impact his film would have, both as a separate entity and, as of now, as a project that has Thailand, Japan and Taiwan producing their own editions of the movie, following in the steps of the original Hong Kong one. This time, we will deal with the Thai one, which is comprised of four segments that implement an approach much more surrealistic than the original one.

Aditya Assarat’s “Sunset” deals with censorship, in a world where the concept has been fully accepted by the public, and is actually implemented by a kind of a thought police.

Assarat shows the ridiculousness of the concept, by having the people in charge forcing the gallery owner to take some photos down for a truly mundane reason. The mistrust towards foreigners is also presented, although the...

The London East Asia Film Festival (Leaff), opens its third year on the 25th October at Vue Leicester Square with “Dark Figure of Crime”, the newest thriller by director Kim Tae-gyun, and runs until the 4th November. It will close with the intelligent and emotionally complex family drama, “Ramen Shop”, the latest feature film by acclaimed Singaporean director, Eric Khoo.

Having expanded to include the cinematic offerings of 13 countries – China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Myanmar – Leaff’s 2018 programme focuses on the “future”. Through the lens and unique perspectives of East Asian filmmakers, Leaff offers compelling insight into not only the future of those in East Asia but in London, with vital and thought – provoking dialogues being opened up around subjects such as youth, human interaction, development, cultural and social issues.

Leaff will screen 6 International premieres, 8 European premieres and 23 UK premieres,...

The eyes of the whole world keep turning towards Asia, whose political and cultural significance rapidly increases year by year. Once again, Five Flavours invites you to discover Asian reality from the inside. The Festival is a perfect opportunity to immerse yourself in gripping pop culture, take part in heated debates about the crucial social changes, and to see the works of renown masters of cinema.

Year of the dog

Following the tradition of the previous years, the visual identification of the Festival is inspired by the lunar calendar. 2018 is the year of the Dog, which symbolizes honesty, loyalty, openness to dialog, and a joyful, friendly nature.

Asian Cinerama

Since 2007, Five Flavours teams up with Asian Film Awards Academy, the institution supporting the promotion of high quality commercial cinema from Asia. The result of this collaboration is a section made up of stunning genre cinema, and the newest hits by renown filmmakers,...

“Ten Years Thailand” an anthology of shorts by Thai directors Aditya Assarat, Wisit Sasanatieng, Chulayarnnon Siriphol and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, imagines what happens to their country, ruled by a military junta since 2014, a decade from now. Opening with George Orwell’s famous line in “1984”: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past,” a common theme in the anthology is mind control for the purpose of producing homogeneity. Drolly absurdist, but only average in inventiveness, and lacking the truly pungent satirical wit of a similar dystopian omnibus like “Tales From the Golden Age,” these vignettes will nonetheless make the rounds at plenty of festivals thanks to the cache of 2010 Palme d’Or winner Weerasethakul.

The Thai, Hong Kong and Japanese co-production is spearheaded by the producers and sales agents of Hong Kong omnibus “Ten Years,” whose dystopian vision of post-handover Hong Kong was banned in...