Serendipity Films launches Macao venture and new films from Amir Naderi, Anshul Chauhan

EXCLUSIVE: Taiwan’s Serendipity Films is expanding with a new venture in Macao and lining up an international slate with directors Amir Naderi, Anshul Chauhan and Arif Khan.

The Taiwan-based company is in Busan for the world premiere of Tracy Choi’s Girlfriends, which plays in the Vision Asia section and is a collaboration with Lumiere Productions and Playhouse in Macao, Thailand’s One Cool Connect and Hong Kong’s Golden Scene, which handles Asia sales.

Iranian filmmaker Naderi, known for Vegas: Based On A True Story, is developing Now Or Never, a Macao-set sports drama about a delivery runner battling respiratory illness trying to break her 5,000-metre record and compete in the Asian Games.

It is produced by Macao-based Serendipity Production, which counts Taiwanese producer Estela Valdivieso Chen and Macaobased Choi among its founders, along with Vincent Wang’s House on Fire in France.

Japan-based Indian director Chauhan will direct High Season (fka Tides), a romantic drama about a troubled man who grapples with conflicting desires for a photographer from Taipei and a local girl employed at his family-owned hotel. Chauhan presents his latest film Tiger in the Vision Asia strand. He was previously at the festival in 2022 with December.

In addition, Tokyo-based UK filmmaker Khan is turning his 2017 short film The Silent Scream into a feature. The horror thriller follows a pop star who moves to a remote Japanese seaside town to recover her singing voice and begins hearing strange sounds that may be victims’ screams that have been recorded by a killer.

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