Taking place alongside Filmart, the Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) is one among Asia’s oldest and most established mission markets, serving to a string of award-winning movies to get made.
Recent HAF successes embrace Mongolian drama If Only I Could Hibernate, which was chosen for final 12 months’s Cannes Un Certain Regard, and Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka’s Stonewalling, which gained greatest movie at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards and was bought to KimStim for North America.
However, HAF is now only one element in an increasing vary of actions organised by HKIFF Industry, the {industry} platform of Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF). This 12 months, the competition has partnered with CAA China to launch the HKIFF Industry-CAA China Genre Initiative (HCG), which is presenting six chosen tasks to an industry-wide viewers throughout HAF.
HKIFF Industry director Jacob Wong explains {that a} style initiative is a logical subsequent step for a tasks market in Asia, the place funding constructions are far more commercially pushed than in Europe. While HAF has had successes, and attracts a excessive stage of participation from European producers and festivals, there are sectors of the Asian {industry} that don’t interact.
“Project markets are an invention of the European industry, which can focus more on cinema over commerce as they have a robust public funding system,” Wong says. “But when transplanted to this part of the world, subsidy cinema doesn’t really exist.”
CAA China’s CEO Mary Gu provides that HCG is designed to assist rising filmmakers, not simply within the mainland China market, but additionally abroad. “HKIFF has long been a source of discovery and with HCG, our shared objective is to provide the next generation of filmmakers in the region with a network of support to help them launch their careers, both locally and in the international marketplace,” she explains.
The six tasks chosen for the inaugural version embrace two tasks within the motion drama or thriller style (Wang Hao’s Countdown To The End and Yan Bing’s Hyperinflation), two romantic comedies (Rowena Loh’s Reunion Diaries and Du Junlin’s Scriptures And Poetry) and two comedy dramas (Gao Linyang’s Dying Fire and Yin Chen-hao’s Call Of Lobster). Leading filmmakers equivalent to Taiwan’s Chen Wei-hao and China’s Guan Hu are connected to supply a few of the tasks, three of that are from first-time administrators (see right here for full particulars).
As a part of the programme CAA China will present a money award of US$20,000 every to 2 hand-picked tasks to assist their improvement, together with mentorship from two CAA China shoppers – author Zhou Yunhai (Godspeed, Coffee Or Tea?) and writer-director Li Fei (The Gift, Two Tigers). CAA China additionally has an choice to board the profitable tasks later by coming into into script improvement offers.
Reconnecting China To The World
CAA China was established in 2017 by U.S. expertise company CAA and Chinese funding fund CMC Capital Partners, though CAA’s involvement available in the market stretches again almost twenty years to the start of China’s modern movie {industry}. In addition to repping movie and TV expertise in China, the company has a portfolio spanning music, sports activities and model partnerships.
Roeg Sutherland, Co-Head of CAA Media Finance, says: “We have a very strong footing in the local business that goes beyond representing actors. Our Beijing team, working in close collaboration with agents in Los Angeles and across the globe, have done fantastic work and are well-positioned to continue to build out opportunities within the market for local and international clients.”
China’s movie {industry}, throughout manufacturing, distribution and exhibition, was successfully reduce off from the remainder of the world throughout the pandemic, and has been sluggish to reengage throughout the previous 12-18 months of market restoration, however Sutherland is optimistic that the market is beginning to open up: “Consumer demand is slowly rebounding and we’re seeing a certain openness to bringing foreign business into the exhibition market. It may not likely reach the highs of before, but there is activity where it was once dormant.”
The potential rebuilding of bridges between China and the remainder of the world will little doubt be below the highlight at this 12 months’s HKIFF Industry Project Market, which is presenting a various vary of tasks from throughout East, South and West Asia, not simply the Chinese-speaking territories.
This 12 months’s HAF might be showcasing 26 In Development Projects, together with Japanese filmmaker Koji Fukada’s Nagi Notes; Camellia Girl from Korean-US filmmaker Josh Kim; tasks produced by main Chinese filmmakers Wang Xiaoshuai (Zhang Yushan’s About Her Hidden Life) and Zhang Lu (Zhang Yu’s Tephra); and Iran-Ukraine co-production, The Echo Of The Leopard.
The line-up additionally contains 15 Works-in-Progress together with Taiwanese filmmaker Chang Tso-Chi’s Intimate Encounter; Kawalan, from the Philippines’ Lav Diaz; Mark Gill’s Ravens, a co-production between France, Japan, Spain and Belgium, which stars Japan’s Asano Tadanobu; and Philippines-Japan-Malaysia co-production Diamonds In The Sand, directed by Janus Victoria and starring Japan’s Lily Franky.
HAF 2024 Works-in-Progress mission Diamonds In The Sand
Meanwhile, HKIFF Industry’s actions aren’t restricted to this intense interval in March throughout Filmart when a complete of 47 tasks are being offered. Each 12 months, 5 HAF tasks are chosen to participate within the HAF Goes To Cannes initiative, serving to the chosen filmmakers to broaden their worldwide networks.
During the late summer season, HKIFF additionally hosts a five-day Film Lab the place a bunch of chosen filmmakers participate in coaching workshops, amongst which two or three are given mentors to assist them put together for entrance into HAF the next 12 months. “At present the projects are all Chinese-language but we’re hoping to be able to introduce non-Chinese projects in the future,” Wong says.
In addition to this, the competition manages HKIFF Collection, which provides chosen tasks recommendation on festivals and worldwide distribution technique. Some of the tasks are dealt with by Song Yiran’s Beijing-based Monar Films, whereas others are launched to different worldwide gross sales brokers, relying on who’s deemed best suited. HKIFF additionally has a co-production initiative with China’s Heaven Pictures below which it’s co-producing seven movies with budgets of U.S.$139,000 (RMB1M).
“The idea is that we’re building an end-to-end system to take projects from inception to the screen,” says Wong. “It’s not easy because of the current difficulties in the international sales and distribution landscape, but we hope that by working with the right partners we can create a supportive ecosystem. While we’re working on genre projects with CAA China, we’re hoping to find other partners for different strands that could use support, perhaps children’s programming.”