News

Beware, spoilers! You may witness the most astonishingly beautiful allegory of death in a movie. The kind of long takes that flashed your mind and remains diffused long after the details of the plot are forgotten. But Shh… these few words should be enough to convince you to watch “Tomorrow is a long time”, the first feature-length film of Singapore's brilliant new formalist, Jow Zhi Wei.

Tomorrow is a Long Time is screening at Black Movie

In a fantasized Singapore, as an archetype of any tropical Asian modern city, the 17 years old Meng is raised alone by an austere hard-working father after his mother has left home, seemingly without an address. Meng's narrative has been clearly devised upon two distinct movements. The first part immerses us in the day-to-day life of this dysfunctional family surviving in a cold and harsh society. While the silent Meng is struggling to exist among...

The Ticp has previously funded titles including Cannes award-winner ‘Tiger Stripes’ and ‘The Settlers’.

A Taiwanese international funding scheme that backed Cannes award-winners Tiger Stripes and The Settlers looks set to shift its focus to more mainstream projects as part of a rethink of the programme.

The Taiwan International Co-funding Program (Ticp) was launched in January 2021 by the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (Taicca) and offered international features, TV series, animation and documentaries up to 30% of a production budget with a cap of $300,000.

However, three years into the scheme, its strategy is being revised to encompass more commercial titles, include more...

Taiwan’s government has suspended its Taiwan International Co-funding Program (Ticp) in a move that appears to signal a change in direction towards more mainstream projects.

The decision has prompted concern among Taiwan’s production community, as the fund was being accessed to set up a wide range of international co-production projects, many of which have secured slots at top international film festivals including Berlin, Venice and Cannes.

When contacted by Deadline, Taiwan Creative Content Agency (Taicca), which manages the fund, offered the following statement:

“To enhance international joint funding and co-production opportunities and to meet the demands of international investments, Taicca has undertaken discussions to revise and optimize the investment initiatives based on the experience of Taiwan’s International Co-funding Program (Ticp). This strategic move aims to attract a broader spectrum of large-scale investment projects, fostering more collaborations between Taiwan and the global community.”

Launched in January 2021, Ticp provides...

Singapore producer Jeremy Chua, who produced this year’s Cannes Camera d’Or winner Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell, has been appointed general manager of the Singapore International Film Festival (Sgiff).

Chua takes up the post on January 1, 2024, and will jointly lead the festival with Programme Director Thong Kay Wee. Emily J Hoe is stepping down after delivering four editions of the festival, including two that were severely impacted by the pandemic.

Founder of Singapore-based production outfit Potocol, Chua also produced or co-produced Nicole Midori Woodford’s Last Shadow At First Light, Jow Zhi Wei’s Tomorrow Is A Long Time, Makbul Mubarak’s Autobiography and Bui Thac Chuyen’s Glorious Ashes.

He was presented with the Fiapf Award for outstanding contribution to Asia Pacific Cinema at this year’s Asia Pacific Screen Awards in Australia.

Sgiff wrapped on December 10 with Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell, directed by Vietnam’s Pham Thien An,...

Chua was lead producer on ‘Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell’.

Jeremy Chua, producer of Cannes award-winning feature Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell, has been appointed general manager of the Singapore International Film Festival (Sgiff).

The announcement coincided with the closing of a bumper edition of Sgiff, where Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell was named best Asian feature film at the Silver Screen Awards.

Chua will assume the role on January 1 and jointly lead the festival with Thong Kay Wee, who has been programme director since 2021. Emily J Hoe is stepping down as executive director after delivering four editions since 2020.

Chua...

One of the most popular events at the 34th Singapore International Film Festival (Sgiff) was a panorama event where six of the country’s leading indie film lights shared a panel to discuss opportunities and challenges.

Opportunities are plentiful, with the festival world embracing Singaporean films and filmmakers warmly. Hong Kong-based Anthony Chen has had a stellar year with his directorial efforts “Drift” and “The Breaking Ice” which premiered at Sundance and Cannes, respectively. The latter was selected as Singapore’s entry to the 2024 Oscars.

Among Chen’s fellow panelists, Jow Zhi Wei’s “Tomorrow is a Long Time” premiered at the Berlinale this year; Nicole Midori Woodford’s “Last Shadow at First Light” at San Sebastian; and Nelson Yeo’s “Dreaming & Dying” won two major awards at Locarno.

Also on the panel were Kelvin Tong and Chai Yee Wei whose “A Year of No Significance” and “Wonderland,” respectively,...

Chinese superstar actor and producer Fan Bingbing will be the 2023 recipient of the Singapore International Film Festival’s (Sgiff) Cinema Icon Award.

The festival will screen three of Fan’s films, curated by her – the recent “Green Night,” “Buddha Mountain” and “Double Xposure” – and the star will walk the red carpet on opening night, Nov. 30. As previously announced, Malaysian Cannes winner and Oscar contender “Tiger Stripes” will open Sgiff.

The Cinema Icon Award and the International Federation of Film Critics (Fipresci) Award are being reintroduced. They were last part of the Sgiff Silver Screen Awards in 2019 and 2006 respectively. Past winners of the Icon Award include Michelle Yeoh (Malaysia), Simon Yam (Hong Kong), Koji Yakusho (Japan), Joan Chen (U.S./China) and Yao Chen (China).

This year, the outstanding contribution to Southeast Asian cinema award is awarded to White Light Post in recognition of its award-winning achievements in post-production work.

The...

Malaysian Tiger To Roar In Singapore

“Tiger Stripes,” the Malaysian coming-of-age, body horror film that debuted in Cannes’ Critics Week section has been set as the opening title for this year’s Singapore International Film Festival (Nov. 30 – Dec. 10). Directed by Amanda Nell Eu, the film is a multinational coproduction that involved Singapore-based Fran Borgia and Akanga Film.

A handful of other Singaporean titles have also been teased by the festival, which will not make its full lineup announcement until Oct. 25. Three will play in competition: “Tomorrow Is a Long Time,” directed by Jow Zhi Wei; “Dreaming & Dying,” directed by Nelson Yeo; and “Last Shadow at First Light,” directed by Nicole Midori Woodford.

Veteran local director Kelvin Tong will also launch his “A Year of No Significance.” The film takes audiences back more than 50 years to Singapore in the 1970s, when a Chinese-educated architect is forced to navigate the cross-roads...

Bradley Liew of Epicmedia Productions (Philippines), Stefano Centini of Volos Films (Taiwan/Italy) and Singapore’s Huang Junxiang have reunited to launch two genre projects at the Busan International Film Festival’s Asian Contents and Film Market.

The trio previously teamed on Sundance Midnight hit, “In My Mother’s Skin” by Kenneth Dagatan, which was recently ranked number six on Variety’s Best Horror Movies of 2023. The film was acquired by Amazon Studios and will stream on Prime Video from Oct. 12.

The producers are backing Dagatan’s “Molder,” a body-horror supernatural thriller set in a sleepy Italian town where an elderly Filipino immigrant struggling with signs of early onset dementia, grapples with the sudden disappearance of his wife and the mysterious young man who claims to have placed a curse upon them. The film aims to blend both Filipino folklore based supernatural horror with the experiences of the Filipino diaspora in Italy.

Identity, incomplete understanding and urban poverty are among the many themes touched upon in “Oasis of Now,” which is set to make its debut next month in the prestigious New Currents competition section of the Busan International Film Festival.

The story revolves around a mother and a daughter who inhabit the invisible corners of an old apartment block in Kuala Lumpur. They meet in the stairwells, play furtive games and snatch moments of shared happiness, before slinking off to their separate homes. The mother thinks she is doing the right thing, but it is not clear that she has the full picture.

“Oasis of Now” is the feature debut of Chia Chee Sum, a Malaysian director and producer who joins a growing crowd of Southeast Asian filmmakers quietly boosting the region’s profile and reputation for high quality, low budget art filmmaking and making use of a pan-regional production methodology.

Recently-established Philippines-based production and financing company, Fire and Ice, has deals to provide completion funding to two films being produced by prolific Singapore-based independent producer Potocol. Under a related agreement, Fire and Ice has also struck a multi-faceted first-look deal with Potocol.

The completion funding, which gives Fire and Ice a share of the film’s equity, will permit the completion of post-production of upcoming Potocol titles: “Pierce,” a sports drama by Nelicia Low, and “Last Shadow at First Light,” by Nicole Midori Woodford. Both films were recently showcased at Focus Asia’s Far East In Progress, part of the Far East Film Festival in Udine, and are expected to be completed before the end of the year.

The first-look agreement covers titles on Potocol’s slate including a project by Rafael Manuel, winner of a Silver Bear in Berlin in 2020 for his short film “Filipinana,” and another by cinematographer...

The Asian premiere of Soi Cheang’s “Mad Fate” is just one of three locally-produced movies that have been set as the opening and closing titles of the upcoming Hong Kong International Film Festival.

“Mad Fate” is joined in the festival opening slot on March 30 by “Elegies,” Ann Hui’s documentary portrayal of the topography of contemporary local poetry, which will have its world premiere. The closing film, another world premiere, is “Vital Sign,” an affecting drama directed by Cheuk Wan-chi and starring Louis Koo, Yau Hawk-sau, and Angela Yuen, which will wrap up proceedings on 10 April.

In total, the festival has programmed some 200 films from 64 countries and territories. These include nine world premieres, six international premieres, and 67 Asian premieres.

“Mad Fate,” an intense examination of murder, local superstition and the lower depths of society, premiered last month at the Berlin festival in a special section. Cheang will be a major feature of the Hkiff,...

Jow Zhi Wei’s feature debut “Tomorrow is a Long Time” which screens in the Generation 14plus program of the Berlinale, is a personal portrait of the working class milieu, and the preassure the hard-labour puts on people who maintain the industry. A large part of inspiration comes from the director’s upbringing, but as he would underline later, only in terms of understanding how fragile the lives of those who struggle to survive is. Just like in his shorts, the topic of family relationships and closeness to death play a significant role in the script.

Jow Zhi Wei studied at Le Fresnoy (France) and Lasalle College of the Arts (Singapore), and was the alumni of the Golden Horse Film Academy in 2010, under the mentorship of Hou Hsiao-hsien who is one of his biggest influences. Before venturing into the world of features, he has made three short films:...

Iván & Hadoum, a Spanish feature film project, to be directed by Ian de la Rosa, has won the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award, along with a $21, 000 (€20,000) endowment, beating out the more than 30 pitches at this year’s Berlinale Co-Production Market. Spanish producers Avalon PC took the top prize, presented by European film fund Eurimages to support the development of the project.

A Ukrainian pitch, The Blindsight, from 2Brave Productions, won a Eurimages Special Co-Production Development Award. Ruslan Batytskyi is set to direct the feature.

The Vff Talent Highlight Award, which comes with a $10,600 (€10,000) bursary, went to God and the Devil’s Cumbia by Mexican director Carlos Lenin, pitched by its producers Daniel Loustaunau of Colectivo Colmena, nd Paloma Petra of Huasteca Casa Cinematográfica. The project also won the inaugural World Cinema Fund Audience Strategies Award, an in-kind prize, presented to a Co-Production Market project from a Wcf-supported country. The producers and...

Nothing can damage you as much as your upbringing, and the lack of parental love at home. Growing up with a single father Chua (multiple awarded Taiwanese actor/ director/ screenwriter Leon Dai) who is incapable of expressing his emotions, the sixteen-year-old Meng (Edward Tan) is slowly transforming into the spitting image of him, projecting the frustration and anger about the life he was born into. “Can you stop being a good-for-nothing? is the thing he gets to hear between the blows he endures at home, instead of comfort for being the targeted victim at school. From a peaceful and loving boy, he briefly becomes a radically opposite person, pushed to evolve into another working class bully. So, where does he go from there once the father is dead and gone?

Tomorrow is a Long Time is screening at Berlinale

Jow Zhi Wei paints a painfully relatable picture of broken family relationships,...

Singapore-based film production outfit Potocol, whose “Tomorrow is a Long Time,” by Jow Zhi Wei bowed at the Berlin Film Festival’s Generation 14plus competition, has revealed a diverse Asian slate.

Potocol’s recent triumphs include Bangladeshi filmmaker Abdullah Mohammad Saad’s Cannes selection “Rehana Maryam Noor” and Indonesian director Makbul Mubarak’s Venice winner “Autobiography.” The company, led by Jeremy Chua who is currently at the Berlinale, has a growing reputation for championing the rise of young filmmakers from across Asia.

Potocol has four films in post-production and several more in development. Nicole Midori Woodford’s debut feature “Last Shadow at First Light” is a supernatural road trip drama that follows a Singaporean teenager tracing the footsteps of her missing mother in Japan and explores the ripple effects of a traumatic event subconsciously buried within the family unit.

A winner of several project development and market prizes at Seafic,...

The slate of offerings from Taiwan at this year’s European Film Market is a solid one, without a doubt. Among the 92 titles of films and projects, there are recent Golden Horse award-winning titles as well as new regional and international co-productions, both completed or works in-progress, in a diverse range of genres that come with promising premises, and a delegation of at least 10 sales companies that will present at the event in Berlin.

Such a strong line-up of films available for international sales can be understood as a snapshot of current state of Taiwan cinema. There’s an emergence of a generation of new talent who dare to challenge the status quo of filmmaking and storytelling, and the ambition to reach an audience beyond the self-governed island is loud and clear. This is especially true following the international attention that “A Sun” and “The Falls” had previously garnered, the...

A first trailer has been unveiled for debutant filmmaker Jow Zhi Wei’s “Tomorrow is a Long Time,” which will have its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival’s Generation 14plus strand.

The film follows sixteen-year-old Meng for whom life is not the most fulfilling, with him lounging at home with his grieving father on a daily basis, being excluded from his family’s past and forced into bullying other kids at school. Everything changes when he is thrown into a life-altering adventure that propels him into an exciting unfamiliar landscape.

The cast includes Taiwanese filmmaker and actor and Golden Horse award winner Leon Dai, emerging Singaporean actor Edward Tan making his screen debut, Jay Victor, Julius Foo and Lekheraj Sekhar.

Producers include Fran Borgia (Locarno winner “A Land Imagined”), Jeremy Chua (Venice winner “Autobiography”), Stefano Centini (“In My Mother’s Skin”), Xavier Rocher (Locarno winner “The Sacred Spirit”) and...

Drama marks the feature directorial debut of Singapore’s Jow Zhi Wei.

Berlin-based Pluto Film Distribution Network has acquired worldwide sales rights to Tomorrow Is A Long Time, the feature directorial debut of Singapore’s Jow Zhi Wei, ahead of its premiere in the Berlinale Generation 14plus competition.

Shot in Singapore and Taiwan, the father-son relationship drama is a coproduction between Fran Borgia’s Akanga Film Asia (Singapore), Stefano Centini’s Volos Films (Taiwan), Xavier Rocher’s La Fabrica Nocturna Cinéma (France), Jeremy Chua’s Potocol (Singapore) and Ico Costa’s Oublaum Filmes (Portugal).

The film focuses on a pest...

The Berlin Film Festival has revealed the first tranche of titles for its Panorama and Generation strands.

The Panorama lineup includes films from Ukraine, Yemen and about Iran. Of the 14 films selected, 11 are world premieres. There are new films by Sepideh Farsi, Jennifer Reeder, Tina Satter, Sacha Polak, Malene Choi and Ira Sachs.

The films selected for the Generation Kplus and Generation 14plus competitions include nine shorts and nine features, including 11 world premieres.

Stars featured in titles across the strands include Willem Dafoe, Ben Whishaw, Adèle Exarchopoulous, Leon Dai and Sydney Sweeney.

The festival takes place Feb. 16-26, 2023.

Panorama Titles

“Al Murhaqoon” (“The Burdened”)

by Amr Gamal. With Khaled Hamdan, Abeer Mohammed, Samah Alamrani, Awsam Abdulrahman, Shahd Algonfedy

Yemen/Sudan/Saudi Arabia

“Au cimetière de la pellicule” (“The Cemetery of Cinema”)

by Thierno Souleymane Diallo

France/Senegal/Guinea/Saudi Arabia

“El castillo” (“The Castle”)

by Martín Benchimol. With Justina Olivo,...

Click here to read the full article.

The Berlin International Film Festival has unveiled the first films selected to run in the Panorama and Generation sidebars of its 2023 edition.

The lineups include films featuring Willem Dafoe, Alicia Silverstone and The White Lotus star Sydney Sweeney and a broad geographical range, with features from Ukraine, Yemen and Iran, among others.

Ira Sachs’ Passages, a Paris-set drama featuring Ben Whishaw, Adèle Exarchopoulous and German actor Franz Rogowski, will have its European premiere in Berlin’s Panorama section, while the Jennifer Reeder-directed Perpetrator, described as a “bloody coming-of-age story” featuring Silverstone, Christopher Lowell and Kiah McKirnan, will have its world premiere bow in Berlin.

Another U.S. title heading to Berlin is Reality, the directorial debut of filmmaker Tina Satter featuring The White Lotus and Euphoria star Sweeney as Nsa whistleblower Reality Winner, who received a five-year prison sentence for leaking an...

Prolific Singapore-based production company Akanga Film Asia, led by producer Fran Borgia, has revealed a robust film slate, including several global co-productions.

Borgia and filmmaker Yeo Siew Hua teamed on 2018 film “A Land Imagined,” which reaped a rich haul of awards around the world, including top prizes at Locarno, Golden Horse, El Gouna, Pingyao, Singapore and Valladolid. They have now re-teamed on “Stranger Eyes,” which is selected at the ongoing Venice Production Bridge’s gap financing market.

The film follows master of surveillance Inspector Goh, who, as he keeps a close eye on a suspected credit card thief, is drawn into the suspect’s world and starts to see himself in the skin of the perpetrator. As it sets him to question the true meaning of his work, Goh is tasked to track down a serial voyeur on the loose who has been videotaping people’s most private moments.

“It...