TCCF Project: Peter Ho’s ‘Appetite for Desire’ Reflects on Greed, Exotic Foods and Disease (EXCLUSIVE)

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 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.

This year’s winners at Camerimage Film Festival in Toruń, Poland were unveiled Saturday, with The New Boy, Warwick Thornton’s drama about an indigenous boy taken in at a mysterious remote monastery, taking the top prize.

Valerie Wu Intern Disney Branded Television has acquired first-generation Taiwanese American filmmaker Sean Wang’s award-winning documentary short, “Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó.” “Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó” features dialogue in both Mandarin and English and is a “multigenerational story” that celebrates Sean Wang’s two grandmothers, one on his father’s side and the other on his mother’s side. The film premiered at the SXSW film festival, where it took home the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award.

Taiwan-Japan documentary After the Snowmelt and Filipino fantasy feature Mother Maybe were presented with the TAICCA X CNC Awards at the close of the pitching forum at Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF). Both awards came with a cash prize of $30,000. 

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.

France’s Centre National du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC) and Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) have signed a cooperation agreement, aimed at increasing collaboration and exchanges between the film and TV industries of Taiwan and France. 

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.

Warner Bros Discovery is reteaming with Taiwanese production company DaMou Entertainment to produce HBO Asia original Fired Up! (working title), an adaptation of hit Kakao webtoon Itaewon Class. 

France’s Series Mania Festival is teaming with Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) to launch a workshop, Serial  Bridges, in France and Taiwan next year that is aimed at East Asian screenwriters and producers. 

Adele Lim, screenwriter of Crazy Rich Asians and writer-director of Joy Ride, talked about the realities of bringing Asian stories to mainstream global audiences in a panel, ‘Asian Rising Power in Hollywood’, on the second day of Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF). 

Sophia Sun Intern Edwin, the Locarno-winning director from Indonesia, is using the Taiwan Creative Content Fest’s project market to bring his “Sleep No More” to fruition. The dark fantasy film is being structured as an Indonesian-Taiwan coproduction and should shoot in the third quarter of next year. With four Citra awards in his native Indonesia, Edwin has been a regular fixture on the art-house and festival circuits since breaking out in 2005 with his “Dajang Soembi, the Woman Who Was Married to a Dog.” His 2021 feature “Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash” won the Golden Leopard top prize at Locarno.

Sophia Sun Intern Indonesia’s Giovanni Rustanto brings “A Ballad of Long Hair” to the 2023 Taiwan Creative Content Fest, its latest stop on a tour of project markets and labs. Set in the 1990s, the project centers around an Indonesian-Chinese young man who inherits a magical trait from his witch mother – his hair grows half a centimeter every night. Possessing mesmerizingly long hair and a unique talent for ethereal metal music, he stands up against oppressive forces and sparks a youth rebellion that challenges toxic masculinity and government corruption.

Taiwan Creative Content Fest kicked off in Taipei today with organizer, Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA), emphasizing its soft power ambitions and growing international cooperation activities, in particular with France, South Korea and Japan. 

EXCLUSIVE: Los Angeles-based distributor Orchid Tree Media has acquired North American rights to Anastasia Tsang’s A Light Never Goes Out, which is Hong Kong’s submission for Best International Feature at the Oscars. A theatrical release is being lined up in select cinemas. 

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).

Sophia Sun Intern Indian director Suman Sen (Oscar-nominated short film “The Silent Echo”) is at the 2023 Taiwan Creative Content Fest with his in-development debut feature film “Solo” (aka “Solo”). The film will center around a story about a mundane 62-year-old diabetic insurance worker, Biplab, who is tormented by everyday trivialities. Feeling frustrated and hopeless about the community he lives in, he begins to question the government’s choice to erect a massive statue.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Screenworks Asia, the production subsidiary of Taiwan-based streaming platform Catchplay, has set two series to release early next year. “Not A Murder Story” follows a wannabe actor who finally gets a chance of success. And when he wakes up with a dead woman besides him, he is determined not to let it stand in his way.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief TAICCABOSSAs Taiwan seeks for creative, industrial and political reasons to make a bigger mark for itself on the international stage, its Taiwan Creative Content Fest is diversifying, expanding and making greater efforts at cross-border outreach. Homme Tsai, chair of industry support body TAICCA spoke outline the event’s strategy and novelties in a conversation with Variety. What are the objectives of the Taiwan Creative Content Fest? The TCCF is an international event for content licensing and project investment.