‘Not a Murder Story’ Sets January Release Date for Taiwan’s ScreenWorks Asia

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The husband and wife team of Otsuka Ryuji and Huang Ji, who worked with a minimalist crew and mostly non-professional actors, gave a round of thanks to Asian leading auteurs for inspiring them, and then hugged each other on stage for winning the Taipei Golden Horse Film Awards best narrative feature prize with their pregnancy drama “Stonewalling.” The numerical winner on Saturday night was “Old Fox,” which earned the best director award for Hsiao Ya-chuan, as well as the best supporting actor, makeup and costume, and best film score prizes. The nominations, announced in October, saw “Snow in Midsummer” collect nine nominations and Taiwan‘s Oscar contender “Marry My Dead Body” head the field with eight.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival drifted to a conclusion in midweek, with project awards presented on Wednesday, followed by Thursday’s festival closing events. These involved a screening of portmanteau film “Tales of Taipei” followed by a sit-down dinner-cum-ceremony with a breezy pair of speeches and no prizes. The film fortnight then sprang to life again on Saturday evening when the 60th edition of the Golden Horse Film Awards represented a new climax.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Marco Mueller, the veteran film festival curator and director, is set to launch a new festival and market in Macau. It will have its first edition in January. The Asia-Europe Young Cinema Festival, running Jan.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Producer and screenwriter, Darren Dale has been named as the new board chair of the Sydney Film Festival, following the retirement of Dianne Weir. He is a leading advocate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content and has been director of Blackfella Films since 2000.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Chewing Gum” was named winner of the NT$1 million Grand Prize, the top award at the 2023 Golden Horse Film Project Promotion production event. Other prizes were awarded for works in progress and for TV series. The winners were announced at a ceremony on Wednesday at the New Horizon Event Space in Taipei, Taiwan.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Cannes’ Directors Fortnight section has joined forces with The Philippines for the latest edition of its Directors Factory professional training program. Operating since 2013, when it kicked off in Taiwan, the Directors’ Factory works with a new partner country each year to mentor eight budding filmmakers who are preparing ambitious first or second feature projects that they will make in pairs. The four resulting co-written and co-directed short films will be screened as part of the Directors’ Fortnight (aka Quinzaine des Cineastes) in May. Four pairs were selected in Manila in October: Eve Baswel (Philippines) and Gogularaajan Rajendran (Malaysia); Maria Estela Paiso (Philippines) and Ashok Vish (India); Arvin Belarmino (Philippines) and Lomorpich Rithy (aka YoKi) (Cambodia); Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan (Philippines) and Tan Siyou (Singapore). They have now begun writing their screenplays and are expected to shoot their films March in Dapitan, a city in The Philippines’ Zamboanga Peninsula, known for its many shrines and as the place of exile of Philippines’ national hero, Jose Rizal. These days it is a hub for domestic and international tourism. Post-production of the four titles will then be hosted in Quezon City, which seeks to become the new film capital of the Philippines and where many of the country’s post-production houses are already based. The program is operated and co-produced by Epicmedia Productions of The Philippines and Dominique Welinski, founder and curator of DW (France).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Local crime drama film “Last Suspect” returned to the top spot at the mainland China box office over the latest weekend, as “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” opened quietly in third place. Narrowly beaten last week by “The Marvels,” “Last Suspect” climbed one place while “The Marvels” fell out of the top five in China. In its third weekend of release, “Last Suspect” recorded $10.1 million (RMB76 million), according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Ridley Scott-directed historical epic “Napoleon” is set to get a release in mainland Chinese theaters next month. The Apple Original Films and Sony Pictures’ title has received approval for import into China and release in a Dec. 1 slot, Sony said on Thursday. Per a Sony synopsis, the film “details the checkered rise and fall of the iconic French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, played by Oscar-winner Joaquin Phoenix.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Alibaba, China’s e-commerce and entertainment giant, revealed a 9% revenue improvement and a return to profits in the three months to the end of September, the second quarter of its financial year. The group, which is in the process of breaking itself up into six separate businesses, had revenue of RMB225 billion ($30.8 billion). Net income of RMB26.7 billion ($3.66 billion) compared with a net loss of RMB22.5 billion in the same period last year.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Deep Sea,” an innovative Chinese-made animation film that has played the international festival circuit throughout this year, will release in North American theaters later this month. Theatrical rights were acquired by Viva Films from Netherlands-China sales outfit Fortissimo Films. Viva plans an outing on Nov.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Auto-bio Pamphlet,” a Marathi-language film that is both a love story and a rage against class divisions, will open the 18th edition of the Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival later this month. The festival will close with the world premiere of spy thriller “13 Bombs in Jakarta.” JAFF run Nov.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The fourth running of the Taiwan Creative Content Fest (aka TCCF) wrapped on Friday with the award of some 30 prizes to film and TV projects in five sections. The prizes followed three and a half days of one-on-one meetings and pitching within the context of the TAICCA-backed project, innovation and rights sales market.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Taiwanese production companies DaMou Entertainment and KOKO Entertainment unveiled a starry local cast for “Fired Up,” their Taiwan remake of hit Korean series “Itaewon Class.” At an event held within the Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) on Thursday, the two companies also confirmed plans for a second season of “The World Between Us,” a 2019 drama series that premiered on Taiwan’s Public Television Service and regional streamer Catchplay. “Fired Up” will star Mandarin-language pop star Eric Chou, Golden Horse Film Award nominee Angela Yuen, Shao Yu-wei, Huang Guan-zhi, Cosmos Lin, Ben Wu and Sean Lin in leading roles. The show is co-directed by kao Pin-chuan and Tseng Ying-ting, working from a script headed by Chien Li-ying (“Wave Makers”). “Itaewon Class” is a story about an ex-convict who sets up his own business after release from jail.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief France and Taiwan on Thursday signed a wide-ranging agreement to enable their film and TV industries co-operate on a higher level. At a signing ceremony in Taipei at the Taiwan Creative Culture Fest (TCCF) convention, government representatives of both territories stressed shared values at the political level and in the audiovisual sphere.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Adele Lim, the screenwriter behind “Crazy Rich Asians” and Disney’s “Raya and the Last Dragon” animation, says that the opportunities for Asian filmmakers are growing as Hollywood is becoming more receptive to international talent. “[In Hollywood] I felt that I was disadvantaged, coming from Malaysia. It is not the cultural nexus,” said Lim, whose infancy was in Malaysia, before her family moved to the U.S.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “My Stand-In,” an action drama that starts shooting imminently, is a new Thai-language original series for Chinese streaming platform iQiyi. Fitting the booming ‘Boys Love’ genre, the series is a screen adaptation of a hit Chinese-language web novel “Stand-In Ship” written by Shui Qiancheng. The underlying novel has garnered over a billion readers on platforms including Weibo and iQiyi Novels.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Chen Shaojie, the founder and CEO of leading gaming live-streaming platform DouYu, has disappeared and has been incommunicado for some three weeks, according to multiple Chinese media sources. The local reports, subsequently carried by the Financial Times and the Alibaba-owned South China Morning Post based in Hong Kong, allege that Chen’s disappearance is related to discovery by authorities of pornography and gambling content on the platform. Both are illegal in mainland China.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief CJ ENM Hong Kong, a unit of South Korea’s CJ ENM, has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA), Far EasTone Telecommunications (FET) and local TV network – TVBS to launch a multi-year content fund that would support the co-production and joint distribution of audiovisual content. The “strategic alliance” combines assets including production, distribution and marketing, media networks and technology.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Japanese entertainment conglomerate Kadokawa is seeking to double its international revenues through a strategy of diversification and localization. Taiwan is expected to be a key plank in the outreach, executives at the Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) heard on Tuesday. “Currently 20% of Kadokawa’s revenues come from outside Japan. I want to get this figure to 40%,” said Natsuno Takeshi, CEO Kadokawa Corp. Kadokawa has its roots in publishing of comics and other fiction and also has deeply-established roots in film production and distribution.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief A trio of ministers, accompanied by a fleet of senior industry names, were on hand Tuesday in Taipei to give their official blessing to the opening of the fourth running of the Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) – and to underline the Taiwan government’s investment in soft power. Cheng Wen-tsan, VP of the [government executive branch] Executive Yuan, Taiwan’s Minister of Culture, Shih Che, and a minister without portfolio were accompanied by Chunghwa Telecom’s chairman, Kuo Shui-Yi, head of TAICCA Homme Tsai and Dominique Boutonnat, president of France’s National Center of Cinematography and the Moving Image, on stage at the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, a former-tobacco factory site that has since been redeveloped. “Nowadays we are investing not only in semiconductors and heavy industry, but also in media and content,” said Cheng. He confirmed that some NT$10 billion ($310 million) of government funding has been approved for the “1 Plus 4T Content Plan” and will be released over four years. In a classic example of public-private partnerships, state cash is being supplemented by further financial commitments from Taiwan’s three major cable-telecoms-internet groups through deals signed last week with Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA).