South Korea’s Asian Cinema Fund (ACF) has selected 14 projects from a record-breaking 850 submissions, marking a 23% increase on last year.
The funding initiative is part of the Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM), the industry platform of Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), and supports filmmakers from Korea and across Asia, backing script development, post-production, and documentary filmmaking.
The Script Development Fund went to Armenia’s Black Star Angel by director Christine Haroutounian; the Philippine’s Heaven Help Us! from Eve Baswel; and China’s New Life by Li Yington, a graduate of the 2024 Chanel x BIFF Asia Film Academy. Each will receive a grant of $7,200 (KRW10m) and an invitation to the Asian Project Market, set to take place in September.
Black Star Angel follows a woman’s fierce struggle to escape a life shaped by war, violence, and trauma; Heaven Help Us! revisits the tragic Manila Film Center of 1981, exploring the narratives of individuals involved in the disaster; and New Life centres on a mother and daughter who support each other after the death of the patriarch
The Post-Production Fund selected four projects that are set to world premiere at BIFF in September.
They included Jeong Seung-o’s Coming Of Age, which captures diverse perspectives and voices across generations and social classes, and Lim Junghwan’s The Observer’s Journal, which blends tension and humour in a story shaped by an unfamiliar setting and surreal circumstances. Both features are from South Korea.
Also selected for this fund were If On A Winter’s Night from India’s Sanju Surendran, which explores Indian society through the stories of multiple couples; and The River That Holds Our Hands, a Hong Kong-Vietnam co-production from Chen Jianhang, which follows a man’s journey to reflect on the diaspora of a Chinese ethnic minority group.
The Asian Network of Documentary (AND) Fund selected seven projects, comprising four from Korea and three from elsewhere in Asia.
The four Korean documentaries include Our Complex, which reflects on Yeosu’s transformation through Expo, industrial, and tourism developments; Sea, Star, Woman, a personal investigation into a mother’s disappearance; Sprouted Potato Lives On, which revisits a demolished hillside neighbourhood in Seoul and the emotional and physical traces left behind; and Weathering Architect, which examines memory and temporality in the rapidly changing landscape of Seoul through the philosophy of veteran architect Joh Sung-yong.
The Asian projects include Neary Adeline Hay’s Kampuchea, a Cambodia-France co-production that examines the intergenerational trauma of violence; Oma, an Indonesia-Philippines-France-Netherlands production by Armin Aeptiexan; and an untitled project from Myanmar’s Min Min Hein.
Each will also be featured in the AND Talk and Share sessions at the ACFM.
The 30th edition of BIFF is set to take place from September 17-26 while the 20th ACFM is due to run September 20-23.
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