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HAF ProFiles Ali’s Wedding Dir Tony Ayres Country of origin Australia China-born, Australia-based director Tony Ayres is clearly drawn to true stories. His award winning 2007 film Home Song Stories — which premiered at that year’s Berlin International Film Festival — was based loosely on his own life story, while his latest project, Ali’s Wedding, is a romantic comedy based on the real-life tale of Iranian actor Osamah Sami who moved to Australia aged 12, where his father became a respected leader of Melbourne’s Muslim community. Ayres directed Sami in his 2008 television movie Saved, and after hearing his life story, encouraged the actor to pull it together in a script, bringing on television writer Andrew Knight as a co-writer. Sami also plays the lead in Ali’s Wedding, as a man who tries to live up to his father’s image but becomes tangled in a web of lies after he falls in love with a Lebanese girl, despite being pledged to an arranged marriage. “This is a story about Muslims that does not involve terrorism or suicide bombers,” says Ayres, whose first feature, Walking On Water, won a Teddy award at Berlin in 2002. “It is about ordinary people, has a lot of humour and humanity and is set in a world we don’t know about and don’t get to see. There are not many accessible Muslim stories predominantly in English,” adds the filmmaker, who thinks the film has the potential to reach wider audiences despite its cultural specifity. Ali’s Wedding is being produced by Michael McMahon and Helen Panckhurst of Matchbox Pictures, the company behind controversial Australian television series The Slap, on which Ayres was also a showrunner and director. With a view to shooting up to 20% of the project in the Middle East, the film-making team will be looking for co-producers at HAF. Sandy George Ali’s Wedding Budget $5.6m raised to date $2m via the Australian government’s producer offset tax rebate Contact Helen Panckhurst helen.panckhurst@ matchboxpictures.com n 8 Screen International at Filmart March 21, 2012 Chocolate City GZ Dir Ruby Yang Country of origin China-Hong Kong After directing several award-winning documentaries, including the 2006 Oscar-winning short The Blood Of Yingzhou District, Chinese-American film-maker Ruby Yang is taking a different direction with her first fiction feature. The story will follow the lives of three young Africans living in the Sanyuanli district of Chinese city Guangzhou, named by taxi drivers as ‘Chocolate City’. “For me, the young Africans in the Chocolate City are just like the Chinese Americans in San Francisco 160 years ago. They are marginalised but still try to make it in a foreign land, at their prime age,” explains Yang. “Being an immigrant in the US and having made films about the earliest Chinese Americans, I feel I understand the solitude of the African community,” adds the director, who will draw on her documentary work and experience as an editor to create a hard-hitting doc style with fastpaced editing and a vivid visual look. Yang is currently writing the script for Chocolate City GZ, and is planning to recruit name actors from Africa, as well as Nigerian scriptwriters to add touches of authenticity to the project. She is producing together with regular collaborator Lambert Yam, who worked on three of her documentaries: Citizen Hong Kong, China 21 and A Moment In Time. Chocolate City GZ is being produced through Yang’s Chang Ai Media Project, which she set up in 2003 to make films that raise awareness of HIV and Aids in China. With $500,000 of investment promised by an undisclosed US-based investor, Yang will be looking for co-production partners at HAF. Sen-lun Yu Chocolate City GZ Budget $1.6m Finance raised to date $500,000 Contact Ruby Yang, Chang Ai Media Project yangrubyzy@gmail.com Here Comes The sun Dir Eitan Anner Country of origin Israel Here Comes The Sun is being pitched as Israel’s answer to revisionist US westerns such as Little Big Man and Unforgiven. “It wasn’t born as an Israeli western, but during the writing process we understood that the story is a classic story,” says writer Guy Meirson of the film to be directed by Israeli film-maker Eitan Anner, whose last feature Love And Dance was distributed in more than 20 countries. The film centres around an engineer in his early 40s who returns to Israel with his American wife, after 20 years living in the US, to build a solar field on Bedouin land, encountering suspicion from the locals. “The subject is the relationship between west and east… Israel lies right in the middle. It sees itself as a western society but at the same time, it has more than a little bit in common with the Third World,” explains Meirson, who wrote from personal experience as he himself returned to Israel after several years in the US. Having already collaborated on television series Room Service, Meirson and Eitan Anner were keen to make a feature. After winning a pitching prize for the project at the Haifa International Film Festival last October, they were bombarded with offers from producers wanting to work on the project. They opted for young, ambitious outfit Green Productions, founded by Gal Greenspan and Roi Kurland in 2009 and a first draft of the screenplay, which will be in English and Hebrew, has been submitted to the Israeli Film Fund. The project is looking to attract a co-producer from an English-speaking territory. Greenspan is also open to producing with Asian partners. He has fond memories of a visit to HAF in 2010 with Israeli director Tom Shoval’s thriller Youth, which is now fully financed and set to shoot shortly. Geoffrey Macnab Here Comes The sun Budget $1.8m raised to date none Contact Green Productions noa@greenproductions.co.il
The Fourth Direction Dir Gurvinder Singh Country of origin India Gurvinder Singh had a meteoric rise to international recognition last year when his debut feature, Alms For A Blind Horse, premiered in Venice’s Orizzonti section and went on to win the special jury prize at the Abu Dhabi film festival. The Punjabi-language drama, about powerless villagers attempting to protect their homes, screened in several other festivals, including Busan and Rotterdam, and picked up best director at India’s prestigious National Film Awards. His next project, The Fourth Direction, deals with one of the most turbulent periods in Punjab’s history, the height of the movement for a Sikh separatist state in 1984. Based on two stories by Punjabi writer Waryam Singh Sandhu, it begins with two Hindu friends who jump a ride on a military train after bribing a guard. During the journey, one of the friends recollects a terrifying night when his family and a Sikh friend were harassed by terrorists. “The story within a story will be the main chunk of the film,” explains Singh. “I had to find a way to integrate the two stories at script level, though more possibilities may open up when we shoot and edit.” Singh wants to recreate the tension of the period that culminated in the Indian military storming the Sikh Golden Temple and the assassination of prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguard. “Basically this film is about common people caught between the political nexus of the state security forces and the terrorism of the militants,” Singh says. The film will be produced by Kartikeya Narayan Singh who line produced Alms For A Blind Horse. Singh is applying for European funds and says he is also open to working again with India’s National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), which produced and financed his award-winning first film. Liz Shackleton The Fourth Direction Budget $1m Finance raised to date $50,000 from The Film Cafe Contact Kartikeya Narayan Singh, The Film Cafe kartikeyanarayansingh@gmail.com Be With You Dir Pang Ho Cheung » Ali’s Wedding p8 » Chocolate City GZ p8 » Here Comes The Sun p8 » The Fourth Direction p9 » Be With You p9 Country of origin Hong Kong-Italy After his successful stab at the slasher genre with Dream Home, Hong Kong film-maker Pang Ho Cheung is next turning his hand to supernatural horror. Be With You, which Pang is scripting with his Love In The Buff co-writer Luk Yee Sum, revolves around a group of high-school students who accidentally summon a malevolent spirit while using a divination board. Later one of the group goes missing in mysterious circumstances, and the following year, during a trip to Italy, the remaining members are plagued by chilling coincidences and an unexplained death. Pang’s producing partner Subi Liang says they hope to shoot part of the film in the Italian cities of Udine and Venice if they raise enough funds. “We attend the Udine film festival nearly every year and Pang has always said it would be the perfect place to shoot a horror movie,” explains Liang. In addition to its horror elements, the film will feature a young cast and include traces of teen romantic drama, while exploring deeper issues such as human nature and fate. Pang has already proved his range with dramas such as Isabella, which premiered in competition at Berlin in 2006, black comedies including AV and Men Suddenly In Black; slasher film Dream Home and Eric Rohmerinspired romantic comedy Love In A Puff. His follow-up to the latter film, Love In The Buff, opens this year’s HKIFF, which will also screen another of his recent films, Vulgaria, a self-confessed low-brow parody of the Hong Kong film industry. Dream Home, starring Josie Ho, won best actress and best special make-up at the 43rd Sitges Film Festival. But Pang says Be With You will rely less on splatter and more on tension and creating an atmosphere of dread. Liz Shackleton Another Country Budget $1.42m Finance raised to date Development funds Contact Subi Liang, Making Film Productions subi@making-film.com » Ready For War p9 » Afternoon Delight! p10 » You’re A Big Girl Now p10 » Balloon p10 » Elephant Soldiers p11 Ready For War Dir Gu Changwei Country of origin China » Imperial Exam p11 » The Enemy — 1949 p11 » Elephant Soldiers p11 » Lost In Poetry p11 Chinese director Gu Changwei’s fourth feature looks set to be a departure from his last three projects, which focused on the family (the Silver Bear-winning 2005 film Peacock), a teacher dreaming of an operatic career (And The Spring Comes) and Til Death Do Us Part, a love story involving Aids sufferers. His latest project centres around a lone soldier guarding one of dozens of secret missile bases which were built by hand, deep in the mountains in China, to store the country’s nuclear arsenal — some missiles pointing East, some pointing West. The film will also have a dual narrative in which a military author and a film-maker try to change the fate of the missile-base soldier. “I was fascinated by the story about how one man’s fate is changed by the environment he lives in and a firm belief in his mind. After the end of the Cold War, a lot of people’s fates have been changed because of the existence of nuclear weapons,” says the cinematographer turned director who has co-written the script with Yang Weiwei, with who he collaborated with on Til Death Do Us Part. Gu and Weiwei are also producing together for Gu’s production company LAB 852. The $3m project is at the script stage with no funding in place yet, but Gu says financing is not a priority objective at HAF. “We hope to find talents or professionals who can collaborate with us creatively in the production process, for we believe this is a very contemporary and international project.” Sen-lun Yu Ready For War Budget $3m Finance raised to date None Contact Gu Changwei, LAB 852 lab8610@gmail.com March 21, 2012 Screen International at Filmart 9 n
Page 3 and 4: DAY 3 www.ScreenDaily.com Editorial
Page 6: REVIEWS Reviews edited by Mark Adam
Page 11 and 12: elephant soldiers Dirs Vardan Hovha
Page 13 and 14: NEW EOF TITLES SELECTED 2012 Regula
Page 16 and 17: The place to fi nd an international
Page 18 and 19: scReenings edited by paul lindsell
Page 20 and 21: Meeting Room N111-N112, HKCEC PEtal
Page 22 and 23: EvEnts SeminarS and eventS WedneSda

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