China sales agent Parallax Films has launched sales on three titles selected for Berlin, including hand-drawn animation A Story About Fire, Taiwanese drama Eel and documentary Underground.
Chinese director Li Wenyu’s debut feature A Story About Fire is a 2D animation hand-drawn in traditional Chinese ink painting style and will play in Berlin’s Generation Kplus section. The protagonist is a monkey who embarks on a journey with his loyal dog to steal fire for mankind and gets transformed into a man on his return.
It is backed by the legendary Shanghai Animation Film Studio, the birthplace of some of the most famous Chinese animated films such as Monkey King: Uproar In Heaven (1961) and Prince Nezha’s Triumph Against Dragon King, which played Cannes in 1980. Midnight Blur Films is a co-presenter.
Taiwanese director Chu Chun-Teng’s feature debut Eel has been selected for Berlin’s new Perspectives section and is set on a remote island near Taipei where a mysterious woman meets a lost man. Together they explore hidden stories and unravel mysteries of longing, belonging and transformation. The cast includes emerging talent Devin Pan from Goddamned Asura and singer-songwriter Misi Ke.
Japanese director Kaori Oda’s hybrid documentary feature Underground, set in play in Forum, captures a range of underground landscapes from Okinawa to Hokkaido, with the underground footage shot on 16mm used as a metaphor for buried memories and collective consciousness. Oda has directed numerous short and mid-length documentaries and several feature documentaries, including 2023’s mid-length Gama, which was screened at MoMA Doc Fortnight and Cinema du Reel.
Parallax’s will launch the titles at the European Film Market (EFM) as part of a slate that also includes Chinese director Zhu Xin’s second feature All Quiet At Sunrise, which will debut at Berlin Critics’ Week – an independent film festival set to run February 12-20.
The fantasy family drama focuses on a graduate student who is writing a linguistic thesis on Lucy (an early primate known as the grandmother of mankind) and appears to discover a way to decode human language and regain the essence of love. Zhu’s 2018 debut feature Vanishing Days played in Berlinale’s Forum and Busan’s New Currents competition.
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