GUWAHATI, Aug 4: ‘Malti My Love’, the latest work by Rima Das has been named among the 30 projects by Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) for this year’s Asian Project Market (APM).
APM, the biggest film investment and co-production market in Asia, has selected 30 projects for this year’s edition. With a total of 399 submissions from 50 countries, this year marked the second-highest competition rate to date.
The film financing event, which runs as part of BIFF’s Asian Contents and Film Market, will take place from October 7 to 10. The selected directors and producers will conduct four days of one-on-one meetings and pitching sessions.
“It definitely feels good to get selected for APM. It will be a new experience for me. I’m looking forward to it,” Rima Das told The Assam Tribune.
“I have never written to this kind of market earlier. Though I had participated in some work-in-progress lab at the editing level, but this kind of platform at an early stage will be my first experience.”
Rima said projects get visibility and people approach for collaboration if selected for this kind of platform.
As the name suggests, ‘Malti My Love’ is a love story of a couple.
According to the organizers this year saw a large number of submissions from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, while the number of Japanese and Taiwanese projects saw a significant increase from previous years.
In particular, the increase in number of co-productions between countries in Asia and the Americas and Europe is raising expectations for Asian contents and creators.
Other prominent filmmakers whose works have been selected in the APM are Japan’s Koji Fukada and Indonesia’s Makbul Mubarak among others.
Rima Das is a BIFF regular who has also had films play in Toronto International Film Festival (‘Village Rockstars’, ‘Tora’s Husband’) and Berlin International Film Festival (‘Bulbul Can Sing’). She will present ‘Malti My Love’, which the self-taught filmmaker will also produce, just as she has produced, written, directed and edited all her previous films.
Indonesian filmmaker Mubarak will bring ‘Watch It Burn’, produced by Yulia Evina Bhara who was a producer on this year’s Cannes Critics Week winner ‘Tiger Stripes’. Mubarak’s debut ‘Autobiography’ premiered in Venice’s Horizons strand last year, where it scooped a Fipresci prize, and went on to win prizes at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, Golden Horse Film Festival and Marrakech among others.
Japan’s Fukada will present the Japan-France co-production ‘Nagi Notes’, produced by Osanai Terutaro. The well-decorated filmmaker is known for directing features such as the Venice competition title ‘Love Life’, Cannes 2016 Un Certain Regard jury prize winner ‘Harmonium’, and Locarno 2019 competition title ‘A Girl Missing’.
These film markets are crucial for independent filmmakers as their projects get a boost for completion.
