Austrian sales agent Square Eyes has boarded Taiwan-Japan documentary After The Snowmelt, ahead of its world premiere at Swiss documentary festival Visions du Reel (VdR, April 12-21).
Directed by Lo Yi-Shan from Taiwan, the debut documentary feature will play in VdR’s Burning Lights competition. It explores the loss of the director’s teenage best friend, Chun, who was trapped in a cave for 47 days with boyfriend Yueh due to unseasonal snowfall in the Himalayan mountains. Chun died just three days before rescue arrived, leaving Yueh as the sole survivor.
To honour Chun’s last wish of sharing his story, Lo returns to Nepal years later, bringing along with her a camera to retrace the journey that she and Chun promised to take together.
At project stage, the film won several accolades, including a TAICCA x CNC grand prize at Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) last November, an Excellence Award at DMZ Docs’ Rough Cut Pitch last year and a development fund from DMZ Docs in 2020.
The Taiwan-Japan production is produced by Hope Content Marketing and Documentary Dream Centre, with Chen Yung-shuang and Cho Tze-lan as producers. It is also supported by Japan’s Yamagata Documentary Dojo residency programme and Indonesia’s Asiadoc Creative Documentary Storytelling Workshop.
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