Cannes Sees Taiwan Co-Productions Bear Fruit 

As the Cannes Film Festival and the Marché du Film are both set to open on the 14th of May, Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) is making a big splash with films and projects it has supported selected in multiple sections. It will also be making its presence felt with several projects pitching at the market. Six films supported by TAICCA co-production initiatives or investment will premiere at the festival. These are Rendez-Vous Avec Pol Pot in Cannes Premiere, The Shameless in Un Certain Regard, Locust in Critics Week, Mongrel in Directors' Fortnight, Colored in the Immersive Competition, and Missing Pictures: Naomi Kawase in the Immersive Selection. Further Taiwanese talent will be on show as Traversing the Mist by Tung-Yen Chou is also selected for the Immersive Competition; actor Eddie Peng is headlining Black Dog in Un Certain Regard; and actors Lee Kang-Sheng and Wu Ke-Xi feature in Blue Sun Palace taking part in Critics Week.

At Marché du Film, Golden Horse Goes to Cannes will present five projects, four of which are supported by TAICCA investment or funds. The Songs from Within will be pitching at the Docs by the Sea Showcase, under Cannes Docs. Having garnered two awards last year at TAICCA's Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF), Second Lead is selected for Shoot the Book!, one of four books from Taiwan selected for the program. At the inaugural Asian IP Showcase in the Spotlight Asia program, Don't Cry, Dancing Girls, and OPUS: Echo of Starsong will be pitching. Meanwhile, two emerging producers, Jacqueline W. Liu and Yu-Hao Su, are taking part in the impACT Lab for finance and production training, as well as exchange with worldwide producers.

TAICCA will be bringing further Taiwanese films and content to Marché du Film in its continuing collaboration with the organizers to foster talent, create opportunities for international co-production, pitching, and business, providing Taiwan's professionals working in the audiovisual sectors to develop deeper links with the international industry. Homme Tsai, the Chairperson of TAICCA, states that through international co-productions, Taiwan's talent can engage more productively with the international industry and participate in more international work. These efforts can then build the professional branding of Taiwan's audiovisual industry and in return, create more opportunities in the international market. TAICCA aims to invest in quality projects through Taiwan's International Co-funding Program (TICP 2.0) to incubate more co-production work with market potential and international outlook.

Rendez-Vous Avec Pol Pot, The Shameless, Mongrel, and Locust are four projects all supported by TICP. Taiwanese producers worked on Rendez-Vous Avec Pol Pot and The Shameless with key post-production work done by Taiwan's editors, color-graders, sound directors and music composers. With its story centering on foreign workers in Taiwan, Mongrelby Chiang Wei Liang was shot entirely in Taiwan by Taiwanese actors and producers. Locust, the debut feature by KEFF, depicts the struggles faced by Taiwan's deprived youth.

Colored and Missing Pictures: Naomi Kawase were both supported by TAICCA's Innovative Content Grant for International Co-funding or Co-Production. Colored takes audiences back to 1955 and America's segregated society, following 15-year-old black teenager Claudette Colvin's fight against the system that launched the civil rights movement. The XR work is produced jointly by Taiwan's Flash Forward Entertainment and Novaya from France. It was shot in Taiwan using the 4DViews technique. It premiered at The Centre Pompidou in early 2023 and toured Taiwan, the US, and the UK before making the Cannes inaugural Immersive Competition. Missing Pictures: Naomi Kawase is part of the Missing Pictures series made for VR. The series profiles five international film maestros, including Tsai Ming-Liang, and sheds light on the untold stories behind their creations. Taiwan's Serendipity collaborated with multinational teams from France, the UK, Luxembourg, and Korea on this overall series and received support from TAICCA and Taiwan's Public Television Service (PTS).

The first Golden Horse Goes to Cannes is a collaboration between the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival Executive Committee and the Marché du Film. It is supported by Taiwan's Ministry of Culture 1+4 T-content plan, which brings the directors, producers, and actors of five work-in-progress projects to the market. Of those five projects, Kung Fu, A Foggy Tale, and Daughter's Daughter received support from the National Development Fund, executed by TAICCA's project-specific investment. They are joined by another TAICCA-supported film, Dead Talents Society. Elsewhere, Intimate Encounter from Taiwan's Chang Tso-Chi will be presented as part of HAF Goes to Cannes. Meanwhile, in Marché's documentary program Cannes Docs, TAICCA is partnering with In-Docs, the Indonesian documentary lab & forum, for the Docs by the Sea Showcase. The Songs from Within by director Elvis Lu, following his previous documentary A Holy Family, is selected to pitch, vying for prizes in this program. The Songs from Within received support from TAICCA's Creative Content Development Program (CCDP).

Six further Taiwan cultural content IPs will be presented in two programs in Marché. Four Taiwanese novels will be featured at Shoot the Book!, a program co-organized by the Civil Society of French-Language Publishers (SCELF) and the Marché for books ready for screen adaptation. Trials of Humanity, Haunted House Realtor, and Mystery of Remains all join Second Lead, which won the FriDay Video Original Story Award and the TVBS Storytelling Impact Grand Award at last year's TCCF. Over in the Asian IP Showcase, the Spotlight Asia program, performing arts Don't Cry, Dancing Girls the Musical, and video game OPUS: Echo of Starsong have been selected for pitching to seek transmedia adaptations. Collaborating with the Singapore Film Commission (SFC), TAICCA will also host the Emerge 2.0: Chinese-language Feature Film Lab in which six projects will be looking to connect with international resources.

Overall, 44 companies with 104 projects will be presented at the Taiwan Pavilion. These include the debut feature, Deep Quiet Room, from Shen Ko-Shen; the romance, A Balloon's Landing, by Angel Teng I-Han; Oh My Ghost! Oh My God! led by Taiwanese-Japanese comedian Naomi Watanabe; youth romance, The Time of Huannan; and family drama, Road's End in Taiwan, which crosses between Taiwan and Switzerland. Documentary projects include After the Snowmelt, winner of the last TCCF TAICCA X CNC Award; Free Beats: The Musical Journey of Chen Ming Chang, by director Lin Cheng-Sheng; and Braving the Peak, following two trail runners conquering Taiwan's Central Mountain Range.