HKIFF Industry is to present a Begin Again Award at FIRST Mart Financing Forum, further strengthening ties with China’s FIRST International Film Festival (FIFF) in Xining.
HKIFF Collection, the sales and distribution label of HKIFF Industry, will select two projects by emerging filmmakers at FIRST Mart and provide them with support for festival strategy and international distribution.
This year, the industry platform comprises 39 projects, including 20 in-development titles and 19 screenings of completed and work-in-progress projects. The two winning projects will receive an in-kind award, each worth $13,800 (RMB100,000), from HKIFF Industry. The awards ceremony will be held on July 27.
Jiang Xiaoxuan’s To Kill A Mongolian Horse, which will world premiere at Venice’s Giornate degli Autori sidebar in September, was at FIRST Mart last year before being selected as a work-in-progress project at the Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) in March to gain international exposure.
This year, three HAF projects are in FIFF’s main competition: Zhang Yudi’s The Midsummer Voice; Kwan Man Hin’s The Remnant; and Qu Youjia’s She Sat There Like All Ordinary Ones. Chen Yusha’s Frankenfish By The River, also a HAF project, is in the First Frame competition.
HKIFF Industry and FIFF first partnered in 2019 with the aim of creating more opportunities for a new generation of Chinese filmmakers.
Several projects from HAF’s film lab, in-development or WIP strands have gone on to win awards at FIFF such as Huang Zi’s All About Ing; Zhai Yixiang’s Mosaic Portrait; Zheng Lu Xinyuan’s The Cloud In Her Room, which went on to win a Tiger award at Rotterdam; Niu Xiaoyu’s Virgin Blue, which went on to compete in Locarno’s Filmmakers of the Present; and Jun Li’s Drifting.
Recent titles in HKIFF Collection’s catalogue for festival and international distribution include Who Were We? by Tetsuya Tomina and Tan Chui Mui’s Barbarian Invasion, which was FIFF’s opening film in 2021.
No comments yet