The Busan festival’s Asian Cinema Fund (ACF) has added two new funds to support documentary film projects – the DMZ Fund for Asian projects about conflict areas and the Busan Film Commission Fund for documentary post-production support.

The ACF’s goal is to encourage independent film productions and to help create a stable production environment for Asian filmmakers. The ACF is divided into the three categories - the Script Development Fund, Post-Production Fund and Asian Network of Documentary (AND) Fund.

Co-executed by the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) and the DMZ International Documentary Film Festival, the DMZ Fund will fall under the AND Fund. It aims to support Asian film directors who plan to shoot stories in and about conflict areas, with an emphasis on communication and peace settlements. The number of projects and amount of support will be adjusted according to the caliber of the submissions.

The Busan Film Commission Fund will be increasing the number of Documentary Post-production Support beneficiaries under the AND Fund to help up-and-coming Korean documentary film directors in difficult circumstances and limited budgets.

ACF 2011 is now taking submissions until May 10 at http://acf.biff.kr.

Previous ACF beneficiaries include Yang Ik-june’s Breathless, Aditya Assarat’s Wonderful Town, Tan Chui Mui’s Year without a Summer and Sivaroj Kongsakul’s Eternity.

The 16th BIFF will run Oct 6-14, with the Asian Film Market and Asian Project Market running Oct 10-13 this year.