‘The Passport,’ ‘Please Bear With Me’ Score Prizes at Bucheon’s NAFF Project Market
variety.comPatrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Bucheon film festival’s Network of Asian Fantastic Films project market wrapped up three days of meetings and pitching sessions on Monday with a prize ceremony that disbursed cash, post-production support and invitations to related genre film events. “The Passport,” a Tamil- and English-language Malaysian project about an Indian rockstar who is forced to confront cultural expectations and her interactions with an imaginary friend, won the headline Bucheon Award for director Ananth Subramanian and producer Bel Choo Mun.
It was both a popular choice among other NAFF participants and the unanimous decision of the jury. The numerical winner was “Please Bear With Me,” which saw director Gabriela Serrano and producer Gale Osorio from the Philippines collect three prizes.
The project is a sci-fi and social issues mash-up about a call center operative who gets paid in dream-time and uses it to relive her glory days as a pop star.
A clearly-surprised Serrano used her second visit to the stage to explain the film’s origins as a deep frustration with seeing Filipina women stuck at the bottom of society and yet apologizing for their ambitions.
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