The Hong Kong Worldwide Movie Competition Society has finalized this system for the twenty fourth Hong Kong-Asia Movie Financing Discussion board (HAF), including 13 initiatives that includes McDull creator Brian Tse, Sundance winner Alireza Ghasemi and Turkish director Tayfun Pirselimoglu to finish a 42-title lineup set for presentation March 17-19 on the Hong Kong Conference and Exhibition Centre.
The ultimate batch contains seven animated options and 6 style works at numerous improvement and manufacturing levels, becoming a member of 29 beforehand introduced in-development and work-in-progress initiatives. All titles shall be showcased on the HKIFF Trade Venture Market alongside FilMart, now in its thirtieth version.
Three of the newly introduced initiatives are in manufacturing or post-production: Brian Tse’s “The Excreman – On the Street,” Avid Liongoren’s “Zsazsa Zaturnnah” and Qin Yuqi’s suspense thriller “What My Bones Know.” The trio will pitch on the WIP Open Pitch session on March 17 alongside the beforehand introduced 12 work-in-progress titles.
HAF’s devoted animation part, launched final yr, has shortly established a observe document for pageant success. Xu Zao’s “Gentle Pillar” is about to premiere at Berlinale’s Views part this month, whereas Toe Yuen’s “A Mighty Journey” received the Golden Horse Award for greatest sound results final November. Each initiatives emerged from the part’s inaugural version.
The animation slate options Tse, creator of the McDull franchise, directing “The Excreman – On the Street,” a couple of huge piece of excrement that defeats a plumber dispatched to cleanse a sewer group, then assumes the plumber’s id to start a brand new human life.
Jhun Yong Duk, co-director of “The Tiger’s Apprentice,” helms “Fish Ball,” following a ruthless common reborn as a sardine who leads an underwater military towards predators utilizing navy techniques.
Alireza Ghasemi, whose “Within the Land of Brothers” received the Sundance World Cinema Dramatic Competitors’s directing award in 2024, directs “Wet Desires,” a hybrid animation-live motion work monitoring six displaced kids in Calais as they navigate their fears and aspirations by way of nightly desires.
Chen Xudong makes his characteristic debut with stop-motion monster movie “Roxanne,” set in a post-apocalyptic ocean and following a boy born at sea trying to find humanity’s final hope. The mission is produced by Lu Xiaowei, whose “Gentle Pillar” screens at Berlinale Views this yr.
Carl Josep E. Papa, whose “The Lacking” received greatest animated movie on the Asia Pacific Display Awards in 2024, directs multi-perspective drama “Sentinel,” centered on a switch pupil, editor-in-chief and college principal who conflict when a campus newspaper article exposes violence within the college’s navy coaching program.
Producer Isabelle Glachant reunites with director Lei Lei on “Tooth and Tales,” a fairy story a couple of boy trying to find the story that may heal his toothache. Lei’s “Silver Hen and Rainbow Fish” competed in Rotterdam’s Tiger Competitors in 2022.
Liongoren, whose “Hayop Ka!” competed at Annecy in 2020, directs “Zsazsa Zaturnnah,” a couple of shy homosexual hairdresser who swallows an area rock that transforms him right into a flamboyant feminine superhero, compelling him to battle zombies and aliens.
The style slate spans psychological thrillers, physique horror and motion drama throughout numerous worldwide settings. Zhou Jinghao, whose “Lady on Edge” screened in Cannes Administrators’ Fortnight in 2025, directs suspense drama “Within the Identify of Proper” a couple of upkeep employee whose choice to assist a struggling worker triggers a deadly accident. Leste Chen produces.
Tayfun Pirselimoglu, whose “Kerr” served as Turkey’s Academy Awards submission in 2023, helms crime thriller “The Energy Plant,” following a harmful liaison between a married meatball vendor and an excavator operator amid mutilated murders in a snow-covered mining city.
Park Kiyong, director of “Gangwondo” in 2021, helms motion drama “Searchers: Blood within the Grass,” monitoring a Korean apple farmer who groups together with his reluctant Mongolian father-in-law to rescue his pregnant spouse from a strong political dynasty concerned in worldwide fentanyl trafficking.
Lam Li Shuen, co-director of “Born of the Yam,” which screens in Berlinale Discussion board Expanded this yr, directs mythological physique horror “Unusual Root” (Keinginan), set in Eleventh-century Singapore and that includes a demi-god born from a yam who’s pushed towards violent and erotic confrontation after being solid apart.
Gabriel Motta makes his characteristic debut with supernatural horror “The Veil,” exploring violence inside religion and household by way of a non secular cult based on pretend possession rituals that descends into darkness when a vengeful entity genuinely possesses the pastor’s daughter. Motta’s quick movie “The Veil” screened at Toronto in 2025.
Qin’s debut “What My Bones Know” is about in a freezing, dying mining city and entangles a school graduate, a terminally unwell miner and a runaway accountant, all drawn to an area tavern following the invention of a severed ear.
All work-in-progress initiatives will pitch March 17 on the Hong Kong Conference and Exhibition Centre’s Starlight Theatre, with groups presenting 10-minute first appears to be like to business attendees together with distributors, producers, buyers, pageant programmers and funding representatives.
