City Busan Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Naman Ramachandran Bangkok-based film fund Purin Pictures will disburse $140,000 to three Philippines and one Indonesian film as part of its fall grants. The Purin committee has chosen three fiction and one documentary projects for production support and one documentary project for post-production support. “The Remotes” is John Torres’ first fiction film after two decades of making documentaries.

Naman Ramachandran India’s Matchbox Shots is developing a project on slain Punjabi rapper Sidhu Moose Wala. Indian rapper, singer and songwriter Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu, known as Sidhu Moose Wala, was a star of Punjabi-language music and cinema whose work charted on Billboard globally. His work was not without controversy – it delved into raw, unfiltered issues, making him a voice for many.

EXCLUSIVE: United Talent Agency has signed Zarrar Kahn, director of Pakistan’s Oscar entry In Flames, for representation in all areas. 

Naman Ramachandran Lila Aviles‘ “Totem” has won the global feature award at the annual Jakarta Film Week. The film previously won awards at the Berlin, Hong Kong, Durban and Beijing film festivals. The direction award for best Indonesian feature film went to Jeremias Nyangoen’s directorial debut “Women of Rote Island.” The film bowed at Busan earlier in October.

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.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Vietnam-based sales agent Skyline Media has closed multi-territory deals for two of its current titles “The Soul Reaper” and “Vietnamese Horror Story.” The deals follow Skyline’s recent trip to Busan’s ACFM and come ahead of its participation as exhibitor at a string of further final quarter sales events – Tokyo’s TIFFCOM, Santa Monica’s American Film Market and Taipei’s Taiwan Creative Content Fest. Folk horror film “The Soul Reaper,” currently in the final stages of post-production, was licensed to GaragePlay for Taiwan and to Westec Media Limited (WML) for Laos, Cambodia and nine other Southeast Asian territories. The film, adapted from Thao Trang’s best-selling horror novel “Lunar New Year in Hell Village” (aka “Tet O Lang Dia Nguc”), is set to be released in Vietnam cinemas on 08 December. GaragePlay is one of Taiwan’s leading distributors, and recently handles releases of “Suzume,” “John Wick: Chapter 4” and “Someday or One Day.” WML is the biggest content distributor in Cambodia and has distributed more than 1,000 titles theatrically since its establishment.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Bhutan’s official Oscar entry “The Monk And The Gun,” Pawo Choyning Dorji‘s follow-up to “Lunana: A Yak in The Classroom,” has been bought by a raft of well-established international theatrical distributors. Following its festival premieres at Telluride, Toronto, Rome and Busan, “The Monk and the Gun” has been sold by Films Boutique to Pyramide Distribution (France), September Films (Benelux), Rialto Distribution (Australia), Future Films (Scandinavia), A Contracorriente (Spain), Lev Films (Israel), Aurora Films (Poland), Trigon (Switzerland), Alambique Films (Portugal) and Impact Films (India and Indian Subcontinent). Earlier this week, the crowdpleaser was also acquired by Roadside Attraction for the U.S.

Naman Ramachandran India’s Film Bazaar, South Asia’s largest film market, has selected a range of projects from around the world for its annual co-production market. The 20 selected projects are from 11 countries, most are already structured as co-productions, and they are all South Asian-themed.

Persona: Sulli, a documentary film starring late K-pop star Sulli, will premiere on Netflix in November.Today (October 26), Netflix confirmed that Persona: Sulli will be released on the streaming platform next month. According to a report from Korea JoongAng Daily, the film will be split into two parts.The first is a short film called 4: Clean Island, which stars the late Sulli as the titular “4”, who travels to an island that is dubbed the cleanest place in the world.

Hulu announced today that Moving, which became the most-watched Korean original on the streamer and Disney+ globally earlier this summer, will be available in English in December.

Guangzhou-based director Choy Ji has filmed Hong Kong from a perspective we’ve rarely seen before in his debut feature Borrowed Time, which played at Pingyao film festival this week after screening in Busan’s New Currents competition. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Acclaimed film-making duo Kamila Andini and Ifa Isfansyah take a calculatedly side-on approach to Indonesian societal history in “Cigarette Girl,” a new Netflix series that releases on Nov.1 and which premiered its first episodes at the Busan International Film Festival earlier this month. Starting with a wealthy family about to lose its aging patriarch in 2001, the series uses flashbacks to the 1960s to uncover not only the origins of the family’s herbal cigarette or ‘Kretek’ fortune, but also the hidden romance underlying it. And it highlights the overbearing and only slowly changing societal pressures placed on women, from high and low ranks, even as Indonesian politics and government underwent tectonic shifts. Ahead of the Busan premiere Andini and Isfansyah told Variety how their lush and romantic treatment is both a product of changing society and a way of facing up to recent Indonesian history.Watch the new trailer here.

Chinese director Ning Hao has flown directly from Busan film festival in South Korea to China’s Pingyao International Film Festival (PYIFF) with his latest film, The Movie Emperor, starring Andy Lau. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Dynamic Singaporean producer Jeremy Chua is to receive the FIAPF Award for Outstanding Contribution to Asia Pacific Cinema, at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) on Nov. 3 on Australia’s Gold Coast.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief K-pop concert movie “BTS: Yet to Come” will play exclusively on the Amazon-owned Prime Video platform, launching on Nov. 9.

Indonesian filmmakers Kamila Andini and Ifa Isfansyah are making their Netflix debut with eight-part series Cigarette Girl (Gadis Kretek), which streams worldwide from November 2.

BTS have announced the release date and availability for their February 2023 concert film, BTS: Yet to Come.Today (October 17), the group announced through its official Twitter account that BTS: Yet to Come will be available to stream on November 9 via Prime Video globally, as well as Coupang Play in South Korea.BTS: Yet to Come was originally released in February 2023 in movie theatres worldwide.

Hopeless.The actor made headlines recently when he revealed that he had rejected a fee for his work in the film.During an interview on the latest episode of Lee Dong-jin’s YouTube series, Song commented on the interest in his lack of payment. “Things went bigger than I expected,” he laughed (translated by SBS Star).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Unrecognizable from her co-starring and breakout role in 2018 hit “Burning,” Jeon Jong-seo is the centerpiece, the tortured protagonist and the athletic avenger, but not the titular dancer, in Netflix movie and Busan International Film Festival selection “Ballerina.” In the hands of fast-rising director Lee Chung-hyung, Jeon is a coolly calculating female former bodyguard who, until roused, looks like she is half dazed. The suicide of her best friend, a sweet wannabe ballerina, who had been blackmailed into sex slavery by a nasty gang, however, is enough to set Jeon’s character, Ok-ju, on the path towards “John Wick”-like ultra-violence. While Lee never leaves the audience in much doubt as to where the film is heading – an early scene in a convenience store is cool, shocking and righteous – his “Ballerina” is typically Korean in that it spends most of the first two reels establishing Ok-ju’s moral standing and motivation for the bloodshed that is going to dominate the latter portions. Once justified, Lee pours it all on, with a dose of weapons fetishization, a horde of mostly disposable villains and heaps of neon-lit bloodshed.

Naman Ramachandran Hansal Mehta‘s “The Buckingham Murders,” which premieres at the BFI London Film Festival, will be the first in a franchise. Written by Aseem Arrora, Raghav Raj Kakker and Kashyap Kapoor, the film follows Jasmeet Bhamra (portrayed by Kareena Kapoor Khan), a detective and mother who, after losing her own child, must investigate the murder of a 10-year-old in Buckinghamshire, going down a rabbit hole of secrets, where almost everyone in the small town becomes a suspect.

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. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Iqbal H. Choudhury’s “The Wrestler” and Mori Tatsutya’s “September 1923” were announced joint winners of the New Currents competition at the Busan International Film Festival. “The Wrester” “was like a single round match, magically depicting an exciting narrative,” the jury said.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Solids by the Seashore,” “The Berefts” and “House of the Seasons” were all multiple winners of the Vision Awards at the Busan International Film Festival on Thursday evening. Another winner was “Yellow Door: ’90s Lo-fi Film Club,” a documentary celebrating Korea’s early cinephiles, who include “Parasite” director Bong Joon-ho. The Vision Awards precede the main New Currents Competition and the Jiseok Competition prizes which will be presented on Saturday at the festival’s closing ceremony.FIPRESCI Award“That Summer’s Lie” Dir. Sohn Hyun-lok.

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. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Some twenty aspiring film projects have been selected to participate in the inaugural edition of the Qcinema Project Market (Nov. 18-19) that this year represents and expansion of the QCinema Film Festival in The Philippines’ Quezon City. The selected titles include development projects by several of East Asia’s better known independent and art-house directors and projects.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Top Japanese star Yagira Yuga (“Nobody Knows,” “Asakusa Kid”) was front and center of streamer Disney+’s plans when it gave a green light to a second season of drama-horror series “Gannibal.” The creepy show, in which Yagira portrays a damaged police detective on the heels of a gangster-like family in a troubled village, has been a ratings winner in terms of minutes watched for the streamer. And, on Sunday, it earned Yagira win an Asian excellence prize at the Busan International Film Festival’s Asia Contents Awards & Global OTT Awards. He spoke to Variety about the newly-started production of the second season.Where does Season Two kick off? In Season One, we saw the surfacing of many secrets including those of the village and the villagers.

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.