Bangladesh’s Booming Presence at Busan Points to Against-the-Odds Industry Emergence: ‘Superheroes Don’t Need to Come From North America’

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief K-pop concert movie “BTS: Yet to Come” will play exclusively on the Amazon-owned Prime Video platform, launching on Nov. 9.

The Wrestler, directed by Bangladeshi-Canadian filmmaker Iqbal H. Chowdhury, and September 1923, from Japan’s Tatsuya Mori, picked up the New Currents Awards as Busan International Film Festival wrapped a busy 28th edition on October 13. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Iqbal H. Choudhury’s “The Wrestler” and Mori Tatsutya’s “September 1923” were announced joint winners of the New Currents competition at the Busan International Film Festival. “The Wrester” “was like a single round match, magically depicting an exciting narrative,” the jury said.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Solids by the Seashore,” “The Berefts” and “House of the Seasons” were all multiple winners of the Vision Awards at the Busan International Film Festival on Thursday evening. Another winner was “Yellow Door: ’90s Lo-fi Film Club,” a documentary celebrating Korea’s early cinephiles, who include “Parasite” director Bong Joon-ho. The Vision Awards precede the main New Currents Competition and the Jiseok Competition prizes which will be presented on Saturday at the festival’s closing ceremony.FIPRESCI Award“That Summer’s Lie” Dir. Sohn Hyun-lok.

Naman Ramachandran Distributor, Day for Night has acquired a trio of Asian titles for U.K. and Ireland at the Busan International Film Festival’s Asian Contents and Film Market. Day for Night is acquiring the late Pema Tseden‘s “Snow Leopard” from Rediance.

Naman Ramachandran Devashish Makhija’s survival thriller “Joram,” which is playing at the Busan International Film Festival, will be released theatrically worldwide by Zee Studios in December. The film, which premiered at Rotterdam earlier this year, is in Busan’s A Window on Asian Cinema strand. Eminent actor Manoj Bajpayee, who previously starred in Makhija’s 2016 short “Taandav” and played the title role in “Bhonsle,” plays Dasru, a tribal migrant worker in Mumbai whose past catches up with him and he must flee with his infant daughter Joram.

EXCLUSIVE: Anand Ramayya’s Karma Film is set to produce Maya Bastian’s The Devil’s Tears alongside Canada’s Blackout Media, while Shant Joshi’s Fae Pictures has also come on board to executive produce. 

Naman Ramachandran The Indonesian film industry is poised to spread its wings globally as the country’s filmmaking boom is the subject of a focus at the Busan International Film Festival. Films from the country now routinely get selected and win prizes at major international festivals. The local market in Indonesia, which has the fourth-largest population in the world with 277 million, is rapidly expanding with homegrown productions accounting for a significant share.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief EST N8, a recently-established finance, production and rights sales company, has added a Hong Kong remake of classic film “Tape” and the LGBT comedy-drama “ASOG” to its bulging sales slate at the AFCM market that accompanies the Busan Intenational Film Festival. “Tape” tells the story of three best friends who, following an event at a graduation party that transforms their lives, reunite 15 years later where a case of blackmail forces them to confront a terrible secret from their past. The original film starred Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Robert Sean Leonard and played at the Sundance, Toronto and Rotterdam festivals.In the Cantonese-language remake directed by Bizhan Tong, Selena Lee, Kenny Kwan, and Adam Pak play the contemporary characters while Mason Fung, Summer Chan, and Angus Yeung portray the characters’ younger versions. The script is written by Stephen Belber, Tong, Lee and Bonnie Lo, and is an adaptation of Belber’s own scripts from both the original film and stage play. The writers and director have significantly modernized the script to reflect advances in technology. Producers on the film include Tong, Lee and Belber.

Naman Ramachandran Sri Lankan auteur Prasanna Vithanage is back at the Busan International Film Festival with thriller “Paradise,” which is in the Jiseok competition. The film follows Indian couple – streaming content producer Kesav (Roshan Mathew, Sundance 2023 series “Poacher”) and blogger Amritha (Darshana Rajendran, “Hridayam”) – who are on vacation in Sri Lanka during the country’s ongoing economic crisis. They are the victims of a robbery and find themselves in the thick of the agitations.

Naman Ramachandran After his fiction feature debut, the absurdist satire “Eeb Allay Ooo!,” Indian filmmaker Prateek Vats is readying political comedy “Chronicles of a Confession.” The film is a selection at the Busan International Film Festival‘s Asian Project Market. “Eeb Allay Ooo!” won big at the Mumbai Film Festival and went on to play at the Berlinale, Sao Paolo and Valladolid among many other festivals.

Naman Ramachandran The renaissance in Indonesian cinema is being celebrated at the Busan International Film Festival this year with 15 films, shorts and series being showcased. Hilmar Farid, Director General of Culture at Indonesia‘s Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology, is leading a 50-strong delegation of filmmakers, committee members and media to the festival. Variety spoke with Farid about the country’s boom and its upcoming opportunities and challenges.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean sales agency Finecut has struck a raft of rights sales on upcoming fantasy-romance “Secret: Untold Melody.” The film, which will premiere at the upcoming Hawaii International Film Festival, tells the tale of a man whose promising piano career is cut short by a wrist injury. He returns to Korea and falls in love with a mysterious woman at his music college.

Naman Ramachandran “Where the Rivers Run South,” the Nepalese project at the Busan International Film Festival‘s Asian Project Market, has received support from the Asian Cinema Fund’s script development pool. The film, which aims to tackle head on two timely issues in Nepal today – migrant labor and patriarchy – marks the feature directorial debut of Suraj Poudel, who previously served as editor on Cannes-winning 2022 short “Lori.” Poudel is an alumnus of Busan’s Asian Film Academy, where he won the Chanel X award for most promising filmmaker award in 2022.

Naman Ramachandran Korean powerhouse CJ ENM is set to continue its already extensive investment in Indonesia. The company will announce a slate of Indonesian films imminently. It is also planning to produce films and series that can be remade in other international territories, said Justin Kim, head of international productions at CJ ENM, which has production and distribution businesses in Indonesia.

Seoul-based sales company Finecut has got off to a busy start at Busan’s Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM) closing a trio of deals on webtoon adaptation Brave Citizen, and picking up international rights to inspirational drama Victory. 

Actors and filmmakers Steven Yeun, John Cho, Justin Chon and Lee Isaac Chung shared their thoughts on the appeal of Korean Diaspora cinema – as well as how they see the current wave of content coming out of Korea – in a philosophical but relaxed press conference at Busan International Film Festival. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Leading Korean content firm Showbox Corp. has added “The Killers,” an unusual anthology film, to its Busan rights sales line up. The film takes its title and themes from Ernest Hemingway’s 1927 short story of the same name.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean sales agency, Finecut has picked up international sales rights to dance drama film “Victory,” which it will launch during the Asian Contents & Film Market that sits alongside the Busan Film Festival. The film, currently in post-production, is an upcoming title by Park Beom-su, a director known for a promising debut film “Red Carpet” in 2014. The story of “Victory” is centered around a high-school dance duo and an underdog school soccer team on a remote island. Two girls initially create a cheerleading club to pursue their love for dance, but they soon find themselves passionately cheering for the soccer team, eventually becoming a source of support for the entire island. The film stars Lee Hye-ri, a member of K-pop girl group Girl’s Day, who has become a popular actor with roles in “Monstrum” and TV’s “Reply 1998,” and Park Se-wan (“Life Is Beautiful,” “6/45,” “Collectors”) as the two protagonists.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Issues of cultural diversity, different Asian diaspora populations and the quest for the Asian cinematic identity came up for discussion on Thursday as the New Currents competition jury at the Busan International Film Festival prepared to get down to work. Filmmaker and academic Jung Sung-il, who is set as the jury president, appeared to invite a degree of dispute that might get the blood racing. “I have high hopes, hope for controversies and good conversations among the jurors,” he said in opening remarks.