Two projects from Indonesia and one from Malaysia were selected from the 11 South-East Asian filmprojects presented at this year's Open Doors in Locarno to receive development and production grantssponsored by the Swiss Foreign Ministry's Agency for Development andCooperation (DEZA).

The decision on the winnersof two grants of $40,874 (CHF 50,000) from the DEZA was made by the Locarno Film Festival in conjunction with the Swiss-basedsupport fund Visions Sud Estand went to Nan Achnas' The Photograph and Ravi Bharwani's Jermal, both from Indonesia.

Achnas' $463,679 (Euros 360,000) project The Photograph is the first productionby the Jakarta-based production company Trix Imagesshe founded in 2004 with producer Paquita Widjaja-Afief, and will be co-produced with Shanty Harmayn's Salto Films.

Salto is also producing Bharwani'ssecond feature Jermal- a drama set on a fishing platform perched precariously in the middle of thesea - with producer-festival director Orlow Seunke.

A third grant of $12,878 (Euros10,000) was made possible thanks to the support of France's CNC for the development phase of Malaysian director Tan Chui Mui's $515,139 (Euros 400,000) HD-shot drama about aging Living Quietly which will be produced byJoanna Lee's Red Films and Tan Chui Mui's company Da Huang Pictures.

Speaking to ScreenDaily.com, Visions Sud Est's director Walter Ruggle explained that the support to the Open Doorsprojects were straightforward grants and the DEZA had provided the $81,826 (CHF100,000) for the two grants over and above Visions SudEst's annual budget.

Now just over a year inexistence, Visions Sud Esthas supported 11 projects from Asia, Africa and Latin America such as Ramon'Mes' De Guzman's Balikbayan Box (Philippines), Murali Nair's Unni (India),Ernest Abdyjaparov's Pure Coolness (Kirgizistan), and Ariel Rotter's El Otro (Argentina) with sums of up to $40,911 (CHF 50,000)production support for feature films and $16,362 (CHF 20,000) for featuredocumentaries. In these cases, a positive funding decision requires that allSwiss rights pass over to Trigon Film fordistribution in Switzerland.

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