Indonesian Distribution in Focus at Busan Market

Naman Ramachandran India’s Film Bazaar, South Asia’s largest film market, has selected a range of projects from around the world for its annual co-production market. The 20 selected projects are from 11 countries, most are already structured as co-productions, and they are all South Asian-themed.

Indonesian filmmakers Kamila Andini and Ifa Isfansyah are making their Netflix debut with eight-part series Cigarette Girl (Gadis Kretek), which streams worldwide from November 2.

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. 

EXCLUSIVE: Indonesian actor Reza Rahadian and director Yosep Anggi Noen are attending Busan International Film Festival with their dystopian crime drama 24 Hours With Gaspar, which is receiving its world premiere in the festival’s Jiseok competition. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Some twenty aspiring film projects have been selected to participate in the inaugural edition of the Qcinema Project Market (Nov. 18-19) that this year represents and expansion of the QCinema Film Festival in The Philippines’ Quezon City. The selected titles include development projects by several of East Asia’s better known independent and art-house directors and projects.

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 Taiwanese actors King Jieh-wen and Hsueh Shih-ling and Indonesia’s Angga Yunanda are set to star in “Malice,” a multinational Asian thriller that will shoot next year. The film’s producers, actors and government backers presented the fully-assembled package to press and industry on Monday at the Busan International Film Festival. The film, pitched as “a road movie at sea,” is a dark tale of three men who put out to sea in search of a particular, large swordfish that had been rumored to have died out.

Naman Ramachandran Bangladesh is a vital presence at the 2023 Busan International Film Festival with three films in competition and a film at the Asian Project Market. The current wave of Bangladeshi cinema was heralded by Mostofa Sarwar Farooki‘s “Television,” which closed Busan in 2012. The festival has subsequently screened almost every major work emerging from the country.

Naman Ramachandran After a three-year hiatus, the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival is returning with a larger lineup and an expanded focus on South Asian cinema. The festival will feature 250 films including 40 world premieres, 45 Asia premieres and 70 South Asia Premieres.

Taiwanese actors Jieh-Wen King and Hsueh Shih-Ling and Indonesian actor Angga Yunanda have been cast in Lim Lungyin’s action adventure Malice, an amitious co-production between Taiwan, Czech Republic and Indonesia.

Naman Ramachandran Hansal Mehta‘s Netflix series “Scoop” on Sunday won the prizes for best Asian TV series and best lead actress for Karishma Tanna at the Busan International Film Festival‘s 2023 Asia Content Awards and Global OTT Awards. The hard hitting crime drama series is based on journalist Jigna Vora’s 2019 memoir “Behind Bars in Byculla: My Days in Prison.” Tanna plays the lead role of Jagruti Pathak, a scoop-hunting journalist who is caught in the nexus of the police, the underworld and the media.

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.

Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) has tweaked its incentive schemes for both international co-productions and offshore production, with the latter cash rebate being increased to 25% with the addition of a cultural bonus. 

Disney+ superhero series Moving was the big winner at Busan Film Festival’s Asia Contents Awards & Global OTT Awards, scooping six prizes, including Best Creative and Best Writer for Kang Full.

Naman Ramachandran The enduring popularity of the Asian LGBT and horror genres and the relationship with giant streamer Netflix were among the topics of discussion at a lively panel focusing on distribution at the Busan International Film Festival‘s Asian Contents and Film Market. “I hate the fact that all the producers want to work with Netflix, it is also killing international sales as well. Because if all the big titles go to Netflix, it leaves very little room for independent distributors,” said Chen Shao-Yi, general manager at Screenworks Asia.

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.