Listen to Indonesian indie band Grrrl Gang’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover

One of Scotland’s best indie bands , Wojtek the Bear , are back with a new song – about becoming a parent for the first time.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Acclaimed film-making duo Kamila Andini and Ifa Isfansyah take a calculatedly side-on approach to Indonesian societal history in “Cigarette Girl,” a new Netflix series that releases on Nov.1 and which premiered its first episodes at the Busan International Film Festival earlier this month. Starting with a wealthy family about to lose its aging patriarch in 2001, the series uses flashbacks to the 1960s to uncover not only the origins of the family’s herbal cigarette or ‘Kretek’ fortune, but also the hidden romance underlying it. And it highlights the overbearing and only slowly changing societal pressures placed on women, from high and low ranks, even as Indonesian politics and government underwent tectonic shifts. Ahead of the Busan premiere Andini and Isfansyah told Variety how their lush and romantic treatment is both a product of changing society and a way of facing up to recent Indonesian history.Watch the new trailer here.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Dynamic Singaporean producer Jeremy Chua is to receive the FIAPF Award for Outstanding Contribution to Asia Pacific Cinema, at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) on Nov. 3 on Australia’s Gold Coast.

The Cover on NME, HotWax, have shared a playlist exclusively to accompany the story’s launch – listen to it below.The Hastings trio are on this week’s (October 16) edition of The Cover, a renewal of NME’s commitment to supporting emerging talent across the globe on a weekly basis. Every week, a rising artist will feature on The Cover – you can read HotWax’s profile here, featuring photography by Fiona Garden.The trio, composed of Talulah Sim-Savage, Lola Sam and Alfie Sayers, have compiled ‘You Are Invited…’, their key influences that inform the band’s sound.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Bertrand Bonello‘s “The Beast,” a dystopian romance drama starring Lea Seydoux (“No Time to Die”) and George MacKay (“1917”), has been bought by distributors in all major markets following its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival. Represented in international markets by Kinology, “The Beast” has sold to the U.K. (Vertigo Releasing), Italy (iWonder), Spain (Caramel), Australia and New Zealand (Rialto), Benelux (Imagine), Scandinavia (NonStop), Latin America (Impacto), Middle East (Front Row), Poland (New Horizons), Greece (Weirdwave), Portugal (Alambique), CIS (Capella), Romania (Transilvania), Bulgaria (Cinelibri), Ex-Yugoslavia (MCF Megacom), India (Superfine) and Indonesia (P.T.

Holly Humberstone has curated an exclusive playlist to accompany this week’s Cover story.The Grantham-raised artist features on The Cover this week (October 9) as we continue to renew our commitment to supporting emerging talent across the globe on a weekly basis. Every week, a rising artist will feature on The Cover, and the full interview with Humberstone can be read here.To celebrate, Humberstone has put together a playlist titled ‘Songs That Give Me All The Feels’ featuring tracks from a wealth of her favourite songwriters, including Ryan Beatty (‘Bruises Off The Peach’), Julia Jacklin (‘Cry’) and Skullcrusher (‘Farm’).

Naman Ramachandran Distribution in Indonesia was the subject of a lively debate at the Busan International Film Festival‘s Asian Contents and Film Market. With 277 million people, Indonesia has one of the largest populations in the world. However, geographically it is an archipelago and for its population, the country is under-screened with just 2,300 cinema screens.

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.

The Match Factory has announced a raft of world sales for Sofia Coppola’s biopic Priscilla ahead of its North American premiere as the Centrepiece selection of the New York Film Festival on Friday.

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.

Academy Awards. The film had its debut in the Critics’ Week section of the Cannes film festival in May and was directed by first-time feature filmmaker Amanda Nell Eu. The announcement was made on Thursday by Malaysia’s Communications and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil following selection by the National Film Development Corporation (FINAS). The film was a eight-way coproduction involving companies from Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Indonesia and Qatar, and emerged from a succession of labs, project markets and international funds. Since winning the Grand Prix at the Critics’ Week, “Tiger Stripes” has been a popular choice on the festival circuit, with stops so far at Neufchatel, The Hamptons, Sitges, London, Fantasia, Taipei and next week’s Pingyao events.Dir. Amanda Nell Eu. International sales: Films Boutique. All submissions and materials for the 2023 race must be received by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences by 5 p.m. on Oct. 2. And films must meet all the qualifying conditions between Dec. 1, 2022, and Oct. 31, 2023. A shortlist of 15 will be announced on Dec. 21. Final nominees will be announced on Jan. 23, 2024. The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024. Argentina, the South American country with the best Academy Awards history, has chosen as its Academy Awards submission “The Delinquents,” Rodrigo Moreno’s incorrigibly playful heist movie, which world premiered at Cannes Un Certain Regard, delighting critics.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Gareth Edwards’ “The Creator” was a resourceful sci-fi endeavor with an $80 million production budget, but its visuals are on par with epic blockbusters that cost three times that amount. Rather than shoot on a studio backlot, the filmmaker behind “Godzilla” and “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” opted to shoot in eight different countries, including Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Japan. For an all-out climatic action sequence set in Thailand, a village comes under attack by the U.S.

Indie band Easy Life have revealed they have been told to change their name by easyGroup - the largest investor of popular airline easyJet.

“Are streamers scaling back?” and “Is this a renaissance period for indie financed films?” were two of the questions at the heart of a Zurich Summit panel this morning, featuring CAA‘s Roeg Sutherland, WME‘s Katie Irwin and Oscar-winning producer John Lesher (Birdman).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Uday Shankar, the former head of Disney in India, says that “limitless” changes to the Indian media landscape may soon leave behind conventional ideas of television and video. The great disruptor is JioCinema, part of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries conglomerate, and in which Shankar is a major investor. JioCinema, which operates streaming services, and is allied with Viacom18, sits alongside the cluster of Jio companies that have, in just a matter of years, exploded the cellular telephony business in India and are doing the same with broadband internet access and video.

Three of Indonesia’s leading studios – MD Pictures, Falcon and Screenplay Films – explained their plans for taking local content international and how they’re juggling between producing for streamers and theatres, in a session at APOS. 

Prime Video has big plans for the Southeast Asia region, including the introduction of channels and an expanded local-language content slate, the streamer’s Vice President, Asia Pacific, Gaurav Gandhi, told the APOS conference today. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Warner Bros Discovery’s JB Perrette warns that the global streaming market faces pain and consolidation over the next three to five years, but he says that the merged group has what it takes to be among the big five groups that pull through. And, to win the war of attrition and consolidation, WBD may choose not to fight every battle. Perrette, WBD’s CEO and president of global streaming and games, said that the company’s Max streaming product is to be rolled out in a largely pre-determined sequence, one that arrives in Latin America and Europe before arriving in parts of Asia. But, speaking on Wednesday at the APOS conference in Indonesia, Perrette said that in some markets Max may never happen, and that WBD may favor local partnerships instead. “If we think we’re going to have success and profitability, if our market differentiation is viable enough to make a go of it and have a profitable business over a three-to-five year timeline [then we will launch Max.] If the answer is ‘no’ because the market has ARPUs that are just too low or it is way over-served by a ton of other players, who are spending on a ton of content and losing a ton of money, we may say this is not the right time,” said Perrette. “If we think we can be successful based on the three metrics that we have [profitability, market share and scale] then, yes, great, we’ll go and figure out how best to tackle it.

Bodhi Tree Systems co-founder and former Disney APAC chief Uday Shankar outlined how his new venture – along with Reliance’s JioCinema – are building an alternative to legacy media in one of the world’s fastest-growing markets, on the first day of Media Partners Asia’s APOS conference in Bali, Indonesia. 

Naman Ramachandran A first trailer has been unveiled for Indonesian filmmaker Yosep Anggi Noen’s “24 Hours With Gaspar.” The film will world premiere at the Busan Film Festival where it is in the prestigious Jiseok competition. Set in 2032 and based on the novel of the same name by Indonesian author Sabda Armandio, the film follows Gaspar, a private detective with 24 hours to live, who finds clues about the mysterious disappearance of Kirana, his childhood friend.