The Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) has announced 31 Asian Cinema Fund (ACF) recipients this year, including Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s The Gardener for post-production funds.

Eight feature film projects will get Script Development funds while six get Post-production funds and 17 projects will benefit from the Asian Network of Documentary [AND] Fund.

Script Development Fund winners include Ekachai Uekrongtham’s Bare, a story about the first nude photographer in Thailand, and Midi Z’s Lian-Qing, A Burmese Girl, about a refugee’s journey of escape from Burma to Thailand.

Post-production Fund winners, which in previous year have gone on to screen as buzz films in the festival proper, this year include Atsushi Funahashi’s romance/drama Under The Cherry Trees In Full Bloom, and  Mostofa Sarwar Farooki’s social satire Television, which was previously selected to the Asian Project Market and ACF Script Development Fund in 2010.

AND Fund winners include Tamara Stepanyan’s Embers, a Lebanese documentary about the older generation, and Shahin Parhami’s documentary about the downfall of a female dancer in pre-Revolutionary Iran. Kim Dong-ryung and Park Kyoung-tae’s Tour Of Duty tells the story of a military base town in Korea, its history and inhabitants.

BIFF reports the 31 projects were selected from “396 fresh and innovative projects with a clear point of view”. The 17th BIFF will run Oct 4 – 13, 2012.

(See full list of ACF 2012 winners on www.biff.kr.)

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