Sri Lankan Economic Crisis is Potent Backdrop for Prasanna Vithanage’s Busan Competition Title ‘Paradise’

Naman Ramachandran Bangladeshi auteur Mostofa Sarwar Farooki has wrapped his latest film “Last Defenders of Monogamy.” The cast is headlined by popular Bangladeshi actor Chanchal Chowdhury (“Karagar,” “Hawa”) and Xefer Rahman and the cast also includes Samina Hussain Prema and Shuddho Rai. The film follows Shafqat (Chowdhury), a father of two adolescents and a loving husband, who is a firm believer in the ideals of monogamy but the winds of change take a big test of his ideologies. “Working with Farooki is always special.

The Wrestler, directed by Bangladeshi-Canadian filmmaker Iqbal H. Chowdhury, and September 1923, from Japan’s Tatsuya Mori, picked up the New Currents Awards as Busan International Film Festival wrapped a busy 28th edition on October 13. 

EXCLUSIVE: Indonesian actor Reza Rahadian and director Yosep Anggi Noen are attending Busan International Film Festival with their dystopian crime drama 24 Hours With Gaspar, which is receiving its world premiere in the festival’s Jiseok competition. 

Naman Ramachandran Distributor, Day for Night has acquired a trio of Asian titles for U.K. and Ireland at the Busan International Film Festival’s Asian Contents and Film Market. Day for Night is acquiring the late Pema Tseden‘s “Snow Leopard” from Rediance.

Naman Ramachandran Devashish Makhija’s survival thriller “Joram,” which is playing at the Busan International Film Festival, will be released theatrically worldwide by Zee Studios in December. The film, which premiered at Rotterdam earlier this year, is in Busan’s A Window on Asian Cinema strand. Eminent actor Manoj Bajpayee, who previously starred in Makhija’s 2016 short “Taandav” and played the title role in “Bhonsle,” plays Dasru, a tribal migrant worker in Mumbai whose past catches up with him and he must flee with his infant daughter Joram.

EXCLUSIVE: Anand Ramayya’s Karma Film is set to produce Maya Bastian’s The Devil’s Tears alongside Canada’s Blackout Media, while Shant Joshi’s Fae Pictures has also come on board to executive produce. 

Naman Ramachandran The Indonesian film industry is poised to spread its wings globally as the country’s filmmaking boom is the subject of a focus at the Busan International Film Festival. Films from the country now routinely get selected and win prizes at major international festivals. The local market in Indonesia, which has the fourth-largest population in the world with 277 million, is rapidly expanding with homegrown productions accounting for a significant share.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Taiwanese actors King Jieh-wen and Hsueh Shih-ling and Indonesia’s Angga Yunanda are set to star in “Malice,” a multinational Asian thriller that will shoot next year. The film’s producers, actors and government backers presented the fully-assembled package to press and industry on Monday at the Busan International Film Festival. The film, pitched as “a road movie at sea,” is a dark tale of three men who put out to sea in search of a particular, large swordfish that had been rumored to have died out.

Naman Ramachandran Bangladesh is a vital presence at the 2023 Busan International Film Festival with three films in competition and a film at the Asian Project Market. The current wave of Bangladeshi cinema was heralded by Mostofa Sarwar Farooki‘s “Television,” which closed Busan in 2012. The festival has subsequently screened almost every major work emerging from the country.

Mumbai Film Festival has announced a packed line-up of 250 films, including the 14 titles selected for its inaugural South Asia Competition, part of an expansion of the festival’s vision to become a hub for works from South Asia and South Asian diaspora talent. 

Taiwanese actors Jieh-Wen King and Hsueh Shih-Ling and Indonesian actor Angga Yunanda have been cast in Lim Lungyin’s action adventure Malice, an amitious co-production between Taiwan, Czech Republic and Indonesia.

Naman Ramachandran Hansal Mehta‘s Netflix series “Scoop” on Sunday won the prizes for best Asian TV series and best lead actress for Karishma Tanna at the Busan International Film Festival‘s 2023 Asia Content Awards and Global OTT Awards. The hard hitting crime drama series is based on journalist Jigna Vora’s 2019 memoir “Behind Bars in Byculla: My Days in Prison.” Tanna plays the lead role of Jagruti Pathak, a scoop-hunting journalist who is caught in the nexus of the police, the underworld and the media.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief EST N8, a recently-established finance, production and rights sales company, has added a Hong Kong remake of classic film “Tape” and the LGBT comedy-drama “ASOG” to its bulging sales slate at the AFCM market that accompanies the Busan Intenational Film Festival. “Tape” tells the story of three best friends who, following an event at a graduation party that transforms their lives, reunite 15 years later where a case of blackmail forces them to confront a terrible secret from their past. The original film starred Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Robert Sean Leonard and played at the Sundance, Toronto and Rotterdam festivals.In the Cantonese-language remake directed by Bizhan Tong, Selena Lee, Kenny Kwan, and Adam Pak play the contemporary characters while Mason Fung, Summer Chan, and Angus Yeung portray the characters’ younger versions. The script is written by Stephen Belber, Tong, Lee and Bonnie Lo, and is an adaptation of Belber’s own scripts from both the original film and stage play. The writers and director have significantly modernized the script to reflect advances in technology. Producers on the film include Tong, Lee and Belber.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief After making four documentary features about border conflicts, ethnicity, prostitution and human rights, Thai director Nontawat Numbenchapol picks up many of the same themes in his first fiction feature “Doi Boi.” The film, which premieres this week in the Jiseok competition section of the Busan International Film Festival, is the story of three young men living on the margins of society in Thailand and their common quest for justice. The characters are an illegal immigrant from Myanmar working, despite his own heterosexuality, as a gay prostitute in Chiang Main, a customer and an on-the-run political activist he is trying to help. The narrative takes in a large number of the social and political problems that have beset seemingly idyllic Thailand in recent years – undocumented workers, illegal immigrants fleeing the civil war in Myanmar, an oppressive political power structure, enforced ‘disappearance’ of those who the government’s political opponents and critics, police brutality – and traffic jams. “I was surprised to find so many immigrant men [from Myanmar’s Shan region] as sex workers in Chiang Mai.

Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) has tweaked its incentive schemes for both international co-productions and offshore production, with the latter cash rebate being increased to 25% with the addition of a cultural bonus. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Vietnam-based sales agent Skyline Media has unveiled five new titles for sales and distribution at the ACFN market that accompanies the Busan International Film Festival. They range from horror films to gay rom com series. “The Soul Reaper” is adapted from director-producer Thao Trang’s best-selling horror novel “Lunar New Year in Hell Village” (Tet O Lang Dia Nguc), and involves the happy occasion of a wedding turn darker after the arrival of a creepy stranger.

Seoul-based sales company Finecut has got off to a busy start at Busan’s Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM) closing a trio of deals on webtoon adaptation Brave Citizen, and picking up international rights to inspirational drama Victory. 

Naman Ramachandran Iran’s Arsalan Amiri, who won two awards at Venice for his debut feature “Zalava,” is at the Busan International Film Festival‘s Asian Project Market with “For the Girls of the Tribe.” Inspired by a real historical event that took place in 1905 in Iran, the film will tell the story of a group of peasants who rescue two girls among dozens who were kidnapped by rebels. The girls have information about a betrayal and are taken before the ruler to provide their testimony but he refuses to accept it, as, according to tradition, a woman’s testimony is only half as valuable as a man’s. “For hundreds of years before this event and even decades after, this situation has recurred in different parts of the world: a group of women is oppressed and most of society, the government and even some other women are silent or passive about it due to fear, benefit or convenience,” Amiri told Variety.

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.

In addition to her duties serving on the jury of Busan’s New Currents competition, U.S.-based producer Christina Oh will be meeting a group of Korean filmmakers at the festival to talk about upcoming film projects and attempt to build more bridges between the film industries of Korea and the U.S.