Chinese sales agent Parallax Films has scooped international sales rights to Malaysian director Chong Keat Aun’s Pavane For An Infant and Japanese documentarian Kaori Oda’s Underground, ahead of their world premieres at Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF, October 28-November 6).
Pavane For An Infant will premiere in the Asian Future competition and stars Malaysia-born Hong Kong-based Fish Liew from 2023 box office hit A Guilty Conscience, rising actress Natalie Hsu (Fly Me To The Moon), Ben Yuen (Suk Suk) and Pearlly Chua (Snow In Midsummer).
The film is set around a baby hatch in Kuala Lumpur where dedicated staff and social workers navigate a maze of opposition to empower women over bodily autonomy in conservative Malaysia, which views such places as an enabler of moral decay.
It marks the third film of director Chong whose 2020 feature debut The Story Of The Southern Islet earned him best new director at the Golden Horse Awards. His second film Snow In Midsummer premiered in Venice’s Giornate degli Autori last year.
Parallax is also representing Oda’s hybrid documentary Underground, which will premiere in TIFF’s Nippon Cinema Now strand. Through images and sounds, Oda explores the fragmented memories of people that transcend time and place. Her works include 2023’s Gama, which screened at MoMA Doc Fortnight.
The titles mark a continued expansion by China’s Parallax into international titles, furthering collaboration with Southeast Asia and Japan that has previously included Woo Ming Jin’s Locarno title Stone Turtle and Yui Kiyohara’s Berlinale selection Remembering Every Night.
The Beijing-based sales agent also recently acquired festival rights to Yin Lichuan’s Like A Rolling Stone, starring Yong Mei as a 50-year-old woman who breaks free of the past and embarks on a solo driving trip across the country. It has become a commercial success at the Chinese box office, earning $16.8m (RMB120m) since its release on September 15.
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