The Locarno Film Festival has selected 12 projects for its Open Doors co-production lab which this year is devoted to Greater China.

The projects, from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, were selected from 114 applications and will have the opportunity to seek co-production partners during the lab which takes place August 9-11 during the Locarno fest.

The selected projects and directors are:

  • Aberdeen – Pang Ho-cheung (Hong Kong)
  • An Everlasting Day – Wanmacaidan (mainland China)
  • Bloodshed – Guan Hu (mainland China)
  • Bus No 8 – Yang Qing (mainland China)
  • Don’t Expect Praises – Yang Jin (mainland China)
  • Eleven Flowers – Wang Xiaoshuai (Hong Kong)
  • Father – Zhang Lu (mainland China)
  • Help – LI Ying (mainland China)
  • Little Wings– Emily Tang (Hong Kong)
  • Tree – Han Jie (mainland China)
  • UFO In Her Eyes – Guo Xiaolu (mainland China)
  • Winter Vacation – Li Hongqi (mainland China)

Two of the projects, Help and Winter Vacation, picked up the Open Doors HAF Locarno Awards during the Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) this March. The award included an invitation to participate in Locarno’s co-production lab.

“We met numerous independent filmmakers and producers, some of them already well-known, others much younger and highly promising talents,” said Open Doors project manager Vincenzo Bugno.

“We were struck by the urgent desire they all shared to reflect and recount contemporary life. Of the projects selected each deals, in its own way, with the enormous diversity of contemporary Chinese society and the position of the individual in a rapidly changing world.”

At the end of the workshop, two grants for production, each worth $46,000 (50,000 Swiss francs), will be awarded by the Swiss Foreign Ministry’s Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). The jury for the awards includes representatives of the festival and Swiss support programme “Visions Sud Est”.

The 62nd edition of the Locarno International Film Festival will take place August 5-15 2009.

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