Hong Kong, 2 February 2021 – The Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) today unveils 21 projects for the fifth edition of its Work-in-Progress section (WIP). Established and emerging filmmakers such as CHANG Tso-Chi, HUANG Ji, Pierre SARRAF, TAN Chui Mui, and Jessey TSANG will present their latest work, along with 12 first-feature directors.
The WIP section will return to its regular slot this year, running from 15 to 17 March in conjunction with the main HAF programme and the 25th Hong Kong Filmart (FILMART). Given the COVID-19 pandemic’s ongoing restrictions, the event will go online again following its first-ever virtual edition in August 2020.
WIP began in 2017 as a dedicated platform for later-stage projects seeking completion funding, post-production partners, distributors and sales agents, and film festival support, extending the services of the main HAF programme which is for projects in the pre-production or development stages.
There were 129 submissions from 50 countries and regions this year. Most of the shortlisted projects are at post-production stages, with several currently in production. The lineup includes 10 documentaries and 11 fiction films, mostly from Asia, with several European productions and co-productions.
Some of the project highlights are as follows:
FICTION PROJECTS:
Several Chinese-language projects spotlight on women. Red Horse In The Summer Sky by Taiwan’s two-time Golden Horse Best Film winner CHANG Tso-Chi (The Best Of Times and When Love Comes), is about a runaway girl looking for her biological father in a seaside village. Husband-and-wife team HUANG Ji and OTSUKA Ryuji (The Foolish Bird and Rotterdam Tiger Award winner Egg And Stone) brings Stonewalling, which centres on a college student who has an unwanted child in her belly.
The eleven debuting fiction film directors include some of Asia’s finest emerging talents. Louis YIN, whose Beijing-set As Day Comes And Goes tells the story of a young man who drives rideshare to escape reality when COVID-19 turns his life topsy turvy. A Light Never Goes Out, directed by Hong Kong’s Anatasia TSANG and produced by Saville CHAN (The Way We Dance), is about a widow’s attempts to retrace her late husband’s past through re-building an iconic neon sign. Produced by award-winning Malaysian filmmaker TAN Chui Mui, Renai WEI’s The Wind Will Say is about a divorced newspaper editor who finds out his daughter’s secret only when held hostage a bus driver. Joining other debutants is GAO Linyang, whose To Love Again deals with old wounds from the Cultural Revolution when an ageing man wants to reinter his late wife with himself and his current wife.
Focusing on ethnic minorities, Iranian filmmaker Arsalan AMIRI sets his feature debut Zalava in a demon-plagued village where a police officer calls the haunting a fraud and apprehends the exorcist. Based on her childhood events, Kyrgyz director Dalmira TILEPBERGEN (Under Heaven) follows the tragic story of an eight-year-old girl who believes all her wishes will come true in Lonely Pine.
DOCUMENTARY PROJECTS:
Personal experiences have always been a useful source of inspiration for documentary filmmakers. In Winter Chants, Hong Kong Film Award’s Best New Director Jessey TSANG (Big Blue Lake) observes the preparation of a traditional festival held once every decade in a historic local village. In Scala, Ananta THITANAT confronts her childhood memories as she documents the demolition of Bangkok’s last standalone theatre where her parents first met when they worked there in the 1970s.
Forgotten elder women are the subject of two documentaries. From Mexico, Eden BERNAL’s The Siren Song follows two ageing sisters in an isolated village who try to preserve the freedom that they can only find at sea as oyster collectors. No Winter Holidays, by Rajan KATHET and Sunir PANDEY from Nepal, is about two old ladies who, once shared a husband, are now tasked to take care of 200 empty houses during a snowbound winter.
Two co-productions have French partners attached. Yasmine’s Journal by Lebanese director Christian ABBOUD (Ubuntu) follows two girls kidnapped by their Lebanese father in France, with Pierre SARRAF (Capharnaum) producing. Forms Of Forgetting by Turkish filmmaker Burak ÇEVİK (The Pillar Of Salt) is a creative documentary focusing on memory.
Please refer to Appendix 1 for details on all shortlisted WIP projects.
WIP Open Pitch (Hong Kong Time):
Date Monday, 15 March 2021
Time 10am – 12pm (documentary projects)
2pm – 4pm (fiction projects)
Awards:
WIP projects selected in the past achieved remarkable results last year. They include:
Drifting, Jun LI (Hong Kong)
Big Screen Competition, International Film Festival Rotterdam 2021
Summer Blur, HAN Shuai (China)
Feimu Awards, Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival 2020
FIPRESCI Award, Busan International Film Festival 2020
Wu Hai, ZHOU Ziyang (China)
FIPRESCI Prize, San Sebastian Film Festival 2020
Faraway My Shadow Wandered, LIAO Jiekai, Sudhee LIAO (Singapore, Japan)
Singapore International Film Festival 2020
Me And The Cult Leader (aka AGANAI: The Atonement), SAKAHARA Atsushi (Japan)
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2020
Hello! Tapir, Kethsvin CHEE (Taiwan)
Nominated for Best Visual Effects, Golden Horse Awards 2020
Marygoround, Daria WOSZEK (Poland)
Best Film, Best Director and Best Actress, Fantasia International Film Festival 2020
Odoriko, OKUTANI Yoichiro (Japan)
Nominated for Best Feature-Length Documentary, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2020
