Southeast Asian Film Lab 2020
The Southeast Asian Film Lab provides a nurturing and collaborative space for Southeast Asian filmmakers who are embarking on their first feature- length film project. During the Film Lab, filmmakers will receive personal feedback from three mentors, and hear from fellow filmmakers as they share their experiences and insights. The programme will end with the filmmakers pitching to a panel of industry experts. Two filmmakers will be awarded Most Promising Project and Fellowship Prize at the Silver Screen Awards.
Projects that have emerged from the Southeast Asian Film Lab have gone on to thrive in other prestigious workshops and markets such as Busan’s Asian Project Market, Cannes’ L’Atelier, Locarno’s Open Doors, SEAFIC and TorinoFilmLab.
Head Mentor
Shozo Ichiyama | Japan
Producer Shozo Ichiyama is the founder and director of film festival, Tokyo Filmex. He has worked with Asian filmmakers on award-winning works, including Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin, Mountains May Depart, Ash Is Purest White, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Flowers of Shanghai, Samira Makhmalbaf’s Blackboards, among many others. His latest film, The Calming by Song Fang, took home the CICAE Prize at the Berlinale Forum 2020.
Mentors
Nandita Solomon | Malaysia
Nandita Solomon is the co-founder of Malaysian independent film production company Apparat, and its film Bunohan was Malaysia’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 2013. She has presented projects at Hong Kong’s HAF, Focus Asia Genre Market in Udine, Singapore’s Southeast Asian Film Financing Project Market and Docedge Kolkata. Solomon also serves as Industry Advisor to the Malaysia Multimedia University’s Faculty of Cinematic Arts.
Mai Meksawan | Thailand
Mai Meksawan was a former Bangkok International Film Festival programmer and co-founder of Thai production and distribution company Extra Virgin. The latter’s most successful title, Agrarian Utopia, was screened in more than 100 festivals worldwide and received 11 international awards. His most recent production, Manta Ray (2018), won Best Film in the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival.
Participants
Ananth Subramaniam | Malaysia
CITY OF SIMPLE SIMONS
In the dry midlands of Malaysia where the machines of mining refineries make the ground tremble, two brothers go in search of a mythical creature in the hopes of finding closure to their mother’s death.
Bianca Balbuena | Philippines
OLIVIA
In a seaside town, pregnant 18-year-old Olivia lives vicariously through the townspeople she observes, creating worlds where she becomes them. As her due date gets closer, Olivia realises that the lives she observes are moving on without her and that she must reclaim her own reality.
Carl Adrian Chavez | Philippines
SAD BOY
Quantified through headcounts and told through fragments of his experiences, Sad Boy is an examination of a lonely gay man’s life in Manila and his countless efforts on trying to be seen in the hypersexualized world of homosexuals in the city.
Charlotte Hong Bee Her | Singapore
TROPICAL RAIN, DEATH-SCENTED KISS
In a vision of Singapore slowly falling into a wilderness populated by spirits, the ghost of a girl’s best friend follows her home.
Mony Kann Darung | Cambodia
DETOUR
A suicidal school-bus driver finds that he is wanted for kidnapping after taking a detour in search of a reason to live, with the help of a high-spirited student.
Jirassaya Wongsutin | Thailand
FLAT GIRLS
Jane is the daughter of a police sergeant. She has lived in the same block of flats since birth. Following the death of her father, Jane and her mother must prepare to leave.
Primrin Puarat | Thailand
BURIED DEAD MOUNTAIN
Following the lives and struggles of villagers who have suffered from the waste mismanagement crisis in eastern Thailand for over a decade, the filmmaker reflects on the pattern of systemic failures and asks whether there are any realistic solutions to the problem.
Nông Nhật Quang | Vietnam
BABY JACKFRUIT BABY GUAVA
A conservative mother, schizophrenic daughter and gay son recount the divergence of their lives as they welcome a newborn baby to the family.
Russell Adam Morton | Singapore
PENUMBRA
A man on the run washes up on a kelong. Caught between land and sea, dreams and monsters, he awaits escape.
Zaw Bo Bo Hein | Myanmar
GARUDA DRAGON
An unhappily married man searches for his true sexual identity with the help of his uncle’s ghost.