city Taipei: Last News

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Coo-Coo 043,” a family drama set in the world of racing pigeons, has been set as the opening film of the 2022 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival. The closing film is comedy “Marry My Dead Body.”  “Coo-Coo 043” is the second film directed by Chan Ching-lin (“The Island That All Flow By”) and stars Golden Bell Awards winners Yu An-shun and Yang Li-yin, along with Golden Harvest Awards best new performer Hu Jhih-ciang and emerging new talent Rimong Ihwar. Chan was previously nominated for Golden Horse Awards best short film for “A Breath From the Bottom,” and as best new director with his feature debut “The Island That All Flow By.” As a work in progress, “Coo-Coo 043” previously participated in the 2021 Golden Horse Film Project Promotion.

Taiwan has selected Lou Yi-An’s Goddamned Asura as the nation’s pick for the 2023 International Feature Film Academy Award.

Switzerland has selected Michael Koch’s Swiss-German language feature A Piece Of Sky as its candidate for the best international film category of the 2023 Oscars.

Quiet by name, but quite some fame. Colm Bairéad’s Irish-language coming-of-age film “An Cailín Ciúin” (“The Quiet Girl”) bowed at the Berlinale earlier this year and has been an unstoppable force on the festival and awards circuit. It won top prizes at the Berlin, Dublin and Taipei film festivals and swept the Irish Film and Television Awards. The film opened theatrically across Ireland and the U.K. mid-May and such is the power of its storytelling that it has cinema dates booked through early September, and will represent Ireland in the Oscars’ international feature category. Nell Roddy, co-founder of Ireland’s Break Out Films, which distributed the film in the country, and Jake Garriock, head of distribution strategy and group publicity at U.K. distributor Curzon, share the film’s journey with Variety. When director Colm Bairéad and producer Cleona Ní Chrualaoi first screened “An Cailín Ciúin” (“The Quiet Girl”) to myself and my business partner Robert McCann Finn in the middle of the pandemic in 2021, we were completely floored by its searing beauty, emotional depth and heartfelt honesty.We founded Break Out Pictures to acquire titles that often need a bespoke theatrical release and, from the outset, we really believed audiences would embrace it just as much as we did.

Actress Rebecca Rittenhouse and Kelly Lamor Wilson attend the opening of HermèsFIT in Los Angeles on Wednesday (July 20) held at the Hollywood Athletic Club, where they enjoyed a performance by Neil Frances.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefThe Asian Cinema Fund, a bursary scheme for film and documentary projects operated alongside the Busan International Film Festival, has announced six Korean recipients and seven hailing from elsewhere in Asia. The fund was put on hiatus during the two years of COVID, which also reduced the festival in size and turned the Asian Contents & Film Market into a virtual event. Three winners – “In the Land of Brothers,” by Raha Amirfazali, “Life I Stole,” by Putri Purnama Sugua and “Smart City,” by Rohin Raveendran – each receive KRW10 million ($7,50) for script development and are invited to participate in the ACFM’s Asian Project Market.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefWildBrain CPLG, a leading entertainment, sport and brand-licensing agency, has been appointed by Peanuts Worldwide as the exclusive licensing agent for the Peanuts brand in parts of Asia-Pacific.   The companies already have a licensing relationship in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and, more recently, India.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefFilm and immersive video projects from Taiwan and France will be put in the spotlight at the Venice Gap-Financing Market, a project support event that is part of the Venice Production Bridge and the Venice International Film Festival.The three-day market will present a huge 63 projects from around the world in the final stages of development and funding, setting up one-to-one meetings and giving them the opportunity to close their international financing.The selected projects include: 33 feature-length fiction film and documentary projects, 16 immersive projects; 11 Biennale College Cinema – Virtual Reality projects; and 3 Biennale College Cinema projects.The market will operate as an in-person event Sept. 2-4, 2022, while the festival runs Aug.

Vivienne Chow A Taiwanese filmmaker has made his short film inspired by Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests available online for free after it failed to get approval from the city’s censorship authorities.Wu Zi-en, director of “Islander,” has uploaded the full 25-minute film noir to online platform Vimeo last week, after it became the third film in a month to have been censored by Hong Kong authorities.The city last year changed censorship regulations to effectively ban any film that is politically sensitive or poses a threat to national security.“Islander” follows a man and his grandson’s journey to visit the son, who has been placed behind bars as a political prisoner in Taipei. The film was selected as part of the Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival in Hong Kong, but its public screening was canceled because the film did not receive the approval in time. Fresh Wave organizers did not respond to Variety‘s request for comment.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor“Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia,” a symphonic work by composer Him Sophy and the first major such piece to address the Khmer Rouge genocide in the country, recently was released on Entertain Impact label.Sophy, himself a Khmer Rouge survivor, places the musical ritual of a Bangsokol – a traditional Khmer ceremony that accompanies Cambodian Buddhist funeral rites – within the form of a Western requiem.“When I composed the requiem,” Sophy says, “I relived the feelings I had during the Khmer Rouge times. It was Hell on Earth.

The new “Hunger Games” movie is shaping up, with Lionsgate revealing new casting information for the upcoming “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”.

Michelle Yeoh is taking on a new role.

Joe Otterson TV ReporterThe Netflix drama series “The Brothers Sun” has set its main cast, which includes Michelle Yeoh, Variety has learned.Yeoh will star alongside series regulars Justin Chien, Sam Song Li, Highdee Kuan, and Joon Lee. Alice Jewkin, Jon Xue Zhang,  Jenny Yang, Madison Hu, and Rodney To will appear in recurring roles.The show was ordered to series at Netflix back in February with an eight-episode pickup. It is set in Los Angeles and Taiwan and features an all-Asian writers room and all-Asian cast.

Netflix’s The Brothers Sun has found its leads.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefThe Taipei Film Festival has named prolific writer-director-producer Kevin Chu (aka Chu Yen-ping) as the recipient of its Outstanding Contribution Award. During the 1980s and the 1990s, Chu made many popular memorable commercial films and discovered several promising new actors — Chu wrote the script of “Never Too Late to Repent” and won the best screenplay award at the Asia Pacific Film Festival. After that, Chu made this directorial debut, “The Clown and the Swan,” which was a critically-acclaimed box office success in which comedy actor Hsu Pu-liao established his name.

Lise Pedersen Germany’s Deckert Distribution has picked up international rights for Taiwanese filmmaker Elvis A-Liang Lu’s sophomore feature “A Holy Family,” which world premiered in Visions du Réel’s international competition section.The film is a home-coming story about the director who returns to his village in Taiwan after a 24-year absence. His elder brother is a psychic who offers career advice to the villagers, but fails in his own entrepreneurial ventures as a farmer, and his father is a gambling addict in poor health.

Vivienne Chow Jimmy Wang Yu, once a superstar of multiple Asian martial arts genres, died on Tuesday. He was 79.News of his death in a Taipei hospital was posted on social media by Wang’s daughter Linda, herself a former Canto-pop star of the 1990s.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefWildBrain CPLG, the agency and licensing arm of kids and family entertainment group Wildbrain, is to open three new offices in Singapore, Taipei and Seoul as part of a major expansion into the Asia-Pacific. The licensing team which is part of WildBrain’s existing Shanghai operations will be expanded and renamed WildBrain CPLG China.Maarten Weck, EVP & MD of WildBrain CPLG, will lead the Asia expansion and be responsible for the management and growth of WildBrain CPLG’s team and business in the region.

Jimmy Wang Yu, a Taiwanese actor who was once one of the biggest stars of martial arts cinema, died Tuesday in a Taipei hospital from an undisclosed illness he battled for six years. He was 79 and his death was announced on Instagram by his daughter, Linda Wang.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefThe Roku Channel has picked up sci-fi adventure series “The Pact” from Qatar-based Katara Studios and Taipei- and Los Angeles-based Organic Media Group.The Roku Channel is the home of free and premium entertainment on the Roku hardware and software platform.The six-part show will be exclusively available on The Roku Channel in the U.S., U.K. and Canada from March 26, 2022, and release to the rest of the world in July.

Manori Ravindran International Editor88Rising co-founder Jaeson Ma and Anonymous Content executive producer Eric Tu are joining forces to launch EST Studios, an independent finance, production and sales outfit geared towards the Asian marketplace.Launching just ahead of the European Film Market — which officially kicks off Feb. 10 — the company specializes in premium film and episodic content.Ma (pictured, left) will serve as the company chairman and co-CEO, with Tu (right) serving as co-founder and co-CEO.