Projects from Aditya Assarat, Wang Qi, Le Bao And Jailed Myanmar Producer Ma Aeint In Busan’s Asian Project Market Line-up
deadline.comBusan International Film Festival (BIFF) has announced the 29 projects selected for this year’s Asian Project Market (APM), a core strand of the festival’s industry activities, including new works from Thailand’s Aditya Assarat, China’s Wang Qi, Vietnam’s Le Bao and Myanmar’s Maung Sun, whose producer Ma Aeint is currently in prison in Yangon.Ma Aeint, who previously produced Maung Sun’s award-winning Money Has Four Legs, was recently sentenced to three years in jail with hard labour by Myanmar’s military junta, which took over the country in a brutal coup in early 2021.
She was accused of “causing fear, spreading fake news or agitating against government employees”. She is attached as a producer to Maung Sun’s new project, Future Laobans, described as a drama about the “international dimension of organized crime.”Assarat, an award-winning Thai director (Hi-so, Wonderful Town), is returning to feature-length directing after focusing on producing, contributing to omnibus projects and co-managing the Purin Pictures film fund for the past ten years.
He is bringing a project entitled The Thonglor Kids, produced by Singapore’s Fran Borgia, to APM.Wang Qi, who won a Kim Jiseok Award Special Mention for The Bargain at last year’s BIFF, is bringing a project called Red River.
Le Bao, whose feature debut Taste (2021) played in Berlin and Busan, is bringing The Sea Is Calm Tonight, a project that juxtaposes stories of Myanmar’s Rohingya refugees and boat people from Vietnam.Female Asian directors in the line-up include Afghan filmmakers Sahraa Karimi, whose feature debut Hava, Maryam, And Ayesha (2019) played in Venice, and Roya Sadat (A Letter To The President); along with Iran’s Dornaz Hajiha, whose debut Like A Fish On The Moon
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