Singapore Funding Behind Two Cannes Festival Films

William Earl While many horror movies are saddled with two-dimensional characters, the biggest strength of “The Boogeyman” is centering the story around a family that genuinely seems to love each other, which ratchets up the tension. The film’s cast had a unique path to finding the chemistry before the cameras even rolled, taking two weeks to act as a family in real life to deepen their bonds. “Mindy Project” alum and “Air” scene-stealer Chris Messina stars as Will Harper, a widowed dad who, despite being a therapist, can’t communicate with his daughters about the pain they’re all feeling. Messina said he was able to get in the right zone with “Yellowjackets” star Sophie Thatcher, who played his teen daughter Sadie, and Vivien Lyra Blair, who played the younger Sawyer, because of their family outings.

Mark Wright’s brand-new show where he goes on a road-trip around the UK with his footballer brother, Josh Wright and dad, Big Mark begins in June on BBC One.The trio travel around the country making new memories after the tragic loss of Big Mark’s brother, Eddie. While the Wrights are a close-knit family at heart, they all left their wives at home to film A Wright Family Holiday.TOWIE star Mark reveals his actress wife, Michelle Keegan, famous for her role in Corrie as Tina McIntyre and more recently Ten Pound Poms, was more than happy for him to go. "Michelle’s supportive,” begins Mark.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The 25th Shanghai International Film Festival, June 9 to 18, has unveiled the titles in contention for awards in its four main feature-length sections: main competition, Asian New Talent, Animation film and documentary. These are eligible for the festival’s prestigious Golden Goblet Awards, winners of which will be announced at the Shanghai Grand Theater on the evening of June 17. While SIFF remains the only mainland China festival to be accredited as a so-called A-list event by the International Federation of Film Producers (FIAPF), its selections are largely separate and distinct from those at other major international festivals.

Anthony Chen’s well-regarded Mainland China-set “The Breaking Ice” has found favor with multiple European and Asian buyers in the few days since its Sunday premiere as part of the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard. The film narrates a love triangle story among China’s lost youth generation and is set in the middle of winter in Yanji, a town that is heavily populated by ethnic Koreans. It is headlined by a star-studded Chinese cast of Zhou Dongyu (“Better Days”), Liu Haoran (“Detective Chinatown” franchise) and Qu Chuxiao (“The Wandering Earth”). “The Breaking Ice” has been newly licensed to Challan for release in South Korea, Trigon-Film for Switzerland, One From the Heart for Greece, Tucker Film for Italy and Edko Films for Hong Kong.Rights sales are handled by Rediance, Mainland China’s leading indie sales company, which reports that addition territory deals are currently being negotiated.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Sundance Film Festival Asia, an offshoot of the Sundance Institute, is to set up camp in Taipei, Taiwan this summer. The three-day mini festival will run Aug. 18-20 and be put together in association with local organizer G2Go Entertainment. The event will showcase a handful of films curated by the Sundance Institute and host a short film competition that is open only to Taiwanese productions. Panel discussions will accompany the festival to foster artistic exchange, providing opportunities for the Taiwan film industry to connect with Sundance’s executive team, and elevating Taiwan’s image and presence in the global independent film industry. 

Chinese actress Zhou Dongyu, who is in Cannes with Anthony Chen’s Un Certain Regard title The Breaking Ice, has had a fairytale career trajectory. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Recently-established Philippines-based production and financing company, Fire and Ice, has deals to provide completion funding to two films being produced by prolific Singapore-based independent producer Potocol. Under a related agreement, Fire and Ice has also struck a multi-faceted first-look deal with Potocol. The completion funding, which gives Fire and Ice a share of the film’s equity, will permit the completion of post-production of upcoming Potocol titles: “Pierce,” a sports drama by Nelicia Low, and “Last Shadow at First Light,” by Nicole Midori Woodford. Both films were recently showcased at Focus Asia’s Far East In Progress, part of the Far East Film Festival in Udine, and are expected to be completed before the end of the year.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief French independent producer Haut Les Mains has come on board “A Useful Ghost,” a film project that is both topical and supernatural. The deal was announced on the margins of the Cannes Film Festival and its accompanying rights market. “A Useful Ghost” follows March and Nat, a happily married couple, and their seven-year-old son Dot. Nat dies of respiratory disease caused by air pollution. A saddened March is worried that the same fate will befall his son, who gradually develops similar symptoms. Nat then returns as a ghost haunting the house vacuum cleaner to try and suck up the dust hurting her son. She also longs to be accepted as part of society and intends to prove that by getting rid of the less useful ghosts.

When the credits rolled at the Lumiere Theatre Monday evening following the debut of Sam Levinson’s The Idol, the loudest and heartiest cheer was handed to actor Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Kirsten Niehuus, CEO at Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, which funds films and TV series production in the Berlin region, and Simone Baumann, managing director of German Films, which promotes and supports the release of German films abroad, welcomed a wide array of guests to their garden party at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday. Three Medienboard-funded films are in this year’s Competition: Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s “Four Daughters,” Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner’s “Club Zero,” and U.S. helmer Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City.” Niehuus told Variety: “Those are three very different productions, but it shows the spectrum [of films] that Medienboard supports.” Tunisian films, like “Four Daughters,” need international co-production funding to get made, she said, and “we believe in world cinema, so were very happy [to back it].” Hausner is “one of the most impressive female filmmakers [in the world], and I think there should be more female filmmakers on the Croisette and every other ‘A’ festival,” she said. “Asteroid City” is “the best of American arthouse filmmaking; very stylish, with a great narrative – so we love it,” she said.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “In Our Day,” the film by South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo which closes the Directors’ Fortnight section of the Cannes film festival, has seen distributors in multiple territories move early to strike rights deals. French rights were picked up by Capricci), Spanish rights by L’Atalante Cinema and Greek rights by Ama Films. The film has its official premiere on May 25. Seoul-based Finecut has long been the sales agent for Hong’s plentiful output. In addition to the deals on “In Our Day,” Finecut signed agreements with L’Atalante, with France’s Ariona Films and Taiwan’s Cola Films for “In Water,” Hong’s first film of 2023 which premiered in the Encounters section in Berlin in February. The film was previously sold to Cinema Guild for North America.

In 2013, filmmaker Anthony Chen’s first feature, “Ilo Ilo,” won the coveted Caméra d’Or at Cannes. Centered around the inseparable bond between a 10-year-old Singaporean boy and his Filipina nanny, Chen’s full-length debut deployed a specific lens — a family weathering the 1997 Asian financial crisis — to tell a universal story exploring the nooks and crannies of our shared humanity.

You’d expect a movie called “The Breaking Ice” to be cold and Anthony Chen’s gentle drama about three isolated young people finding moments of connection definitely stays away from passionate and heated statements. But it’d be a mistake to think that Chen’s restraint comes at the expense of feeling, because “The Breaking Ice” is one of the most beautifully evocative films to screen during the first few days of this year’s Cannes Film Festival.A luminous “Jules and Jim” riff with a stunning visual design and a real purpose to its apparent aimlessness, “The Breaking Ice” screened on Sunday in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, bringing the Singaporean director back to the festival where he won the Camera d’Or for “Ilo Ilo” in 2013, and also appeared as part of the COVID-era anthology film “The Year of the Everlasting Storm” in 2021.“The Breaking Ice” begins with a fascinating shot of workers cutting ice blocks from a frozen lake.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International In 2021, a generation of disillusioned youth in China decided to step off the hamster wheel and “lie flat” on the ground. Crushed by overbearing workloads with no long-term reward in the form of job security or home ownership, young people indulged in the “tang ping” resistance movement, which advocated for manageable working hours and a quality of life — all of which were the antithesis of China’s punishing 9-9-6 work culture — working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. It’s this tang ping generation that Singaporean filmmaker Anthony Chen is speaking to in his latest film, “The Breaking Ice.” The movie, which premieres in Un Certain Regard at Cannes on May 21, follows three young people who hit the road together after their lives intersect unexpectedly.

In 2013, filmmaker Anthony Chen’s first feature, “Ilo Ilo,” won the coveted Caméra d’Or at Cannes. Centered around the inseparable bond between a 10-year-old Singaporean boy and his Filipina nanny, Chen’s full-length debut deployed a specific lens — a family weathering the 1997 Asian financial crisis — to tell a universal story exploring the nooks and crannies of our shared humanity.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Wilfredo Manalang, who was one of the producers of last year’s Cannes’ Japanese hit “Plan 75,” has come on board Vietnamese film project “Don’t Cry, Butterfly.” Manalang (aka Will Fredo) and partners in his Philippines-based Fusee consortium will join as an executive producer. Written and to be directed by Duong Dieu Linh, “Don’t Cry, Butterfly” follows a Vietnamese housewife who finds out that her husband is cheating on her. Instead of confronting him, she uses voodoo on him so he falls back in love with her. Production of “Don’t Cry Butterfly” is by Tan Si En at Singapore-based Momo Film Co. The company was founded in 2018 by Tan and writer-director Kris Ong. In 2021, Beach House Pictures, part of Canada’s Blue Ant Media, acquired a majority stake in Momo.

Christopher Vourlias With a Ukrainian cinema union issuing a strident call on Thursday for participants of the Cannes Film Market to halt all business with Russia rather than support “terrorism,” industry professionals are again weighing the moral cost of working in the country against the financial upside of releasing films in the lucrative Russian market. Many U.S. and foreign companies quietly continued to do business with the pariah state after the Ukraine invasion or resumed the dealmaking that was put on pause once the war began. Honoring contracts that were signed before fighting commenced or working through third-party distributors in other jurisdictions, they’ve ensured that a steady stream of foreign content — including Lionsgate’s “John Wick: Chapter 4” and A24’s Oscar-winner “Everything Everywhere All at Once” — continues to reach Russian movie theaters.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Amanda Nell Eu’s “Tiger Stripes,” which had its premiere this week in Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, is being celebrated as a punchy female-driven debut feature and as the first film by a Malaysian woman director in any section Cannes. The story focuses on a small group of 11 or 12-year-old girls. When one of the friends enters puberty she finds her body changing in unexpected ways. Relations with her friends and family start morphing too. Eu’s finished film straddles the metaphorical drama and body horror genres. “Tiger Stripes” is also a triumph for the now highly-developed global network of project markets, talent development programs, script and production workshops (often labelled as ‘labs’) and grant schemes. These are intended to encourage diversity and nurture film-making talent in countries where that is a rarity or where commercial films crowd out more experimental art-house titles.

Marta Balaga Cannes Blood Window Showcase is readying to send a shiver down Cannes’ spine, presenting eight upcoming films – in pre and post-production – on Friday. “Since 2014, our idea has always been to give greater visibility to the projects that have gone through Blood Window at Ventana Sur,” says the head of the program Javier. C. Fernández, calling the event “a celebration for the Latin American genre film community.” Presented titles will include “When Evil Lurks” by Demián Rugna, “Mitra, Turn off the Light to See” by Diego Bellochio, Diego Kartaszewicz’s “Buzzing,” Joseph Diaz’s “Bloody Mary,” “The Collector,” directed by Facundo Escudero Salinas and “Chuzalongo” by Diego Ortuño. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Returning as an in-person event after cancelation last year, the Shanghai International Film Festival has set out an agenda with a clear focus on China. The festival (June 9-16) will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s economic outreach and development program. With a series of press conferences and film culture roundtables, the SIFF’s Belt and Road Film Week will “bring together old friends of the alliance from previous years and new friends made this year [..] and announce an action plan for the future.”