The Hong Kong Worldwide Movie Pageant Society has finalized this system for the twenty fourth Hong Kong-Asia Movie Financing Discussion board (HAF), including 13 tasks that includes McDull creator Brian Tse, Sundance winner Alireza Ghasemi and Turkish director Tayfun Pirselimoglu to finish a 42-title lineup set for presentation March 17-19 on the Hong Kong Conference and Exhibition Centre.
The ultimate batch contains seven animated options and 6 style works at numerous growth and manufacturing phases, becoming a member of 29 beforehand introduced in-development and work-in-progress tasks. All titles will probably be showcased on the HKIFF Trade Venture Market alongside FilMart, now in its thirtieth version.
Three of the newly introduced tasks are in manufacturing or post-production: Brian Tse’s “The Excreman – On the Highway,” Avid Liongoren’s “Zsazsa Zaturnnah” and Qin Yuqi’s suspense thriller “What My Bones Know.” The trio will pitch on the WIP Open Pitch session on March 17 alongside the previously announced 12 work-in-progress titles.
HAF’s devoted animation part, launched final 12 months, has rapidly established a observe document for competition success. Xu Zao’s “Gentle Pillar” is about to premiere at Berlinale’s Views part this month, whereas Toe Yuen’s “A Mighty Journey” received the Golden Horse Award for finest sound results final November. Each tasks emerged from the part’s inaugural version.
The animation slate options Tse, creator of the McDull franchise, directing “The Excreman – On the Highway,” a few huge piece of excrement that defeats a plumber dispatched to cleanse a sewer neighborhood, then assumes the plumber’s identification to start a brand new human life.
Jhun Yong Duk, co-director of “The Tiger’s Apprentice,” helms “Fish Ball,” following a ruthless normal reborn as a sardine who leads an underwater military in opposition to predators utilizing navy techniques.
Alireza Ghasemi, whose “Within the Land of Brothers” received the Sundance World Cinema Dramatic Competitors’s directing award in 2024, directs “Wet Desires,” a hybrid animation-live motion work monitoring six displaced kids in Calais as they navigate their fears and aspirations by nightly goals.
Chen Xudong makes his characteristic debut with stop-motion monster movie “Roxanne,” set in a post-apocalyptic ocean and following a boy born at sea trying to find humanity’s final hope. The mission is produced by Lu Xiaowei, whose “Gentle Pillar” screens at Berlinale Views this 12 months.
Carl Josep E. Papa, whose “The Lacking” received finest animated movie on the Asia Pacific Display Awards in 2024, directs multi-perspective drama “Sentinel,” centered on a switch scholar, editor-in-chief and college principal who conflict when a campus newspaper article exposes violence within the faculty’s navy coaching program.
Producer Isabelle Glachant reunites with director Lei Lei on “Tooth and Tales,” a fairy story a few boy trying to find the story that may heal his toothache. Lei’s “Silver Hen and Rainbow Fish” competed in Rotterdam’s Tiger Competitors in 2022.
Liongoren, whose “Hayop Ka!” competed at Annecy in 2020, directs “Zsazsa Zaturnnah,” a few shy homosexual hairdresser who swallows an area rock that transforms him right into a flamboyant feminine superhero, compelling him to battle zombies and aliens.
The style slate spans psychological thrillers, physique horror and motion drama throughout various worldwide settings. Zhou Jinghao, whose “Lady on Edge” screened in Cannes Administrators’ Fortnight in 2025, directs suspense drama “Within the Identify of Proper” a few upkeep employee whose determination to assist a struggling worker triggers a deadly accident. Leste Chen produces.
Tayfun Pirselimoglu, whose “Kerr” served as Turkey’s Academy Awards submission in 2023, helms crime thriller “The Energy Plant,” following a harmful liaison between a married meatball vendor and an excavator operator amid mutilated murders in a snow-covered mining city.
Park Kiyong, director of “Gangwondo” in 2021, helms motion drama “Searchers: Blood within the Grass,” monitoring a Korean apple farmer who groups along with his reluctant Mongolian father-in-law to rescue his pregnant spouse from a strong political dynasty concerned in worldwide fentanyl trafficking.
Lam Li Shuen, co-director of “Born of the Yam,” which screens in Berlinale Discussion board Expanded this 12 months, directs mythological physique horror “Unusual Root” (Keinginan), set in Eleventh-century Singapore and that includes a demi-god born from a yam who’s pushed towards violent and erotic confrontation after being forged apart.
Gabriel Motta makes his characteristic debut with supernatural horror “The Veil,” exploring violence inside religion and household by a non secular cult based on faux possession rituals that descends into darkness when a vengeful entity genuinely possesses the pastor’s daughter. Motta’s quick movie “The Veil” screened at Toronto in 2025.
Qin’s debut “What My Bones Know” is about in a freezing, dying mining city and entangles a university graduate, a terminally sick miner and a runaway accountant, all drawn to an area tavern following the invention of a severed ear.
All work-in-progress tasks will pitch March 17 on the Hong Kong Conference and Exhibition Centre’s Starlight Theatre, with groups presenting 10-minute first seems to business attendees together with distributors, producers, buyers, competition programmers and funding representatives.
