HAF Project Market Adds Works-in-Progress

variety.com:

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefA new film project by Xinjiang-based Wong Lina and others produced by Stanley Kwan and Soi Cheang are among fifteen works-in-progress that have been added to the Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF).HAF previously announced the selection of 28 projects that are at an earlier stage of development.

The event is organized by the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society and runs March 14-16, 2022, alongside the Hong Kong FilMart entertainment rights market March 14-17.Wong, who made a stunning directorial debut “A First Farewell,” appeared in Berlin and won the Firebird Award in the HKIFF’s first Chinese-language Young Cinema competition in 2019, returns with “Village .

Senet.” The film is a poetic musical about a boy from a remote village in Xinjiang’s Taklamakan Desert. The film is produced by Beijing-based Bad Rabbit Pictures, a company founded by cinematographer Cao Yu and actress-producer Yao Chen (“Send Me to the Clouds,” “The Eight Hundred”).

The company also has Qiao Sixue’s debut feature, “The Cord of Life” in HAF. “Cord” explores the notion of hometown through a nomadic electronic musician who brings his Alzheimer-stricken mother back to the Mongolian grassland for her last days.Two of the selected works-in-progress titles are familiar to the event’s regular attendees. “Borrowed Time” and “The Sunny Side of the Street” both won script consultation service awards at HAF Film Lab in 2019.