Southeast Asian Film Lab

HEAD MENTOR
MICHEL REILHAC | FRANCE

Michel Reilhac is a narrative architect and long-time transmedia and immersive media pioneer. Reilhac is known as a leading international expert for innovation in hybrid storytelling across participatory, interactive and immersive experiences. As the Head of Studies at the Venice Biennale College and the VR competition curator for the Venice Biennale International Film Festival since its inaugural competition in 2017, Michel is regularly invited to speak and teach at major international events, including the Cannes International Film Festival, SXSW, Tribeca Film Festival, TEDx, CPH:DOX, Dixit, Power to the Pixel, Sunny Side of the Doc, FEMIS and many more. From 2002-2012, Michel was Head of Cinema & Film Acquisitions at Arte France and executive director of Arte France Cinema, co-producing around 30 international independent feature films each year, including Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist and Melancholia. In 2013, Michel was named Man of the Year 2012 in Film by industry magazine Le Film Français. Michel is also a virtual reality filmmaker himself – his first production Viens! premiered at Sundance in 2016. In 2017-2018, Michel was head of the award-winning independent production company Submarine Channel in Amsterdam. Currently, he also curates the immersive content program at Series Mania in Lille, France.

MENTOR
LEE CHATAMETIKOOL | THAILAND

Lee Chatametikool is an award-winning editor and filmmaker. A long-time collaborator with Apichatpong Weerasethakul, including the Palme d’Or winning Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, he has also worked with key filmmakers in the Thai independent scene such as Anocha Suwichakornpong and Aditya Assarat, and on commercial hits such as Thai horror film Shutter. He was awarded Best Editor at the Asian Film Awards three times. He took a break from editing in 2013 to direct his debut feature film Concrete Clouds, which premiered in Busan and in competition in Rotterdam. Chatametikool co-founded White Light Post in 2010, a one-stop post production facility that has worked on films such as Railway Sleepers, Call Me By Your Name, and Cemetery of Splendour. Chatametikool also teaches at Mahidol University in Thailand.

MENTOR
TERESA KWONG | HONG KONG

Teresa Kwong is a promoter, curator and producer for film and cross-disciplinary arts practices. Currently the Programme Director of the Hong Kong Arts Centre, she is committed to nurturing and promoting the next generation of arts talents. She has started producing feature films with independent filmmakers in Hong Kong and China since 2006. She has been selected to participate in the renowned Produire au Sud Workshop 2008 – Nantes (France) and Rotterdam Producer Lab 2013 for co-production. Her titles as the producer include Addicted to Love (directed by Liu Hao, 2010), Big Blue Lake (directed by Tsang Tsui Shan, 2011), Flowing Stories (feature documentary by Tsang Tsui Shan, 2014), Dot 2 dot (directed by Amos Why, 2014), Napping Kid (Amos Why, 2018) and Suk Suk (Ray Yeung, post- production).

At the factory, San becomes fond of Theint, a woman with a troubled past. San wants to bring Theint to her village for a visit during the season of fruit gathering. But their relationship turns into torment as the factory workers put up a protest for higher minimum wage.

An amateur criminal who is desperate for money to bury his wife robs the local bank, and unknowingly takes a suicidal person as hostage.

Two elderly cardboard collectors traverse Singapore in a tricycle cart to sell stolen handphones. Along the way, they test their friendship, confuse the police, and discover a city that has forgotten about them.

20-something Bonnie Lam gets more than she bargained for when she decides to abandon her family’s funeral parlour business to save the struggling cafe that her deceased mother left to her. The cafe is slated to reopen on the first day of the Ghost Month.

A new female worker at a bra factory is being sexually harassed at work but she decides to keep it a secret from her jobless husband. Unbeknownst to her, he finds out and decides to take revenge on the molester by disguising himself as a soldier.

On a ghastly night in Hanoi, where the dead and the living reside alongside each other, a mortician tries to stop his boss from disposing the body of a prostitute that will expose his influential father’s scandal.

Hidden from an ongoing war, a young girl lives in a secluded all-female town. When she learns her best friend has contracted a fatal disease, she leaves to find a cure, only to uncover the realities of warfare.

Astri, a 16-year-old Muslim transwoman and her 17-year-old boyfriend, Tambulah live in bliss in their conservative Sama Badjao community until Astri’s father tells her to marry the girl she is betrothed to.

An exploration of Singapore’s societal and cultural expectations through the lens of a misfit in an all-girls’ school, as she leads a girl gang, navigates her queerness, and tries to pass the all-important final year examinations.

Koon, an 8-year-old boy, has been raised by his mother and told little about his father’s passing. When his wheelchair-bound uncle moves in with them, he starts to plant ideas that his father may still be alive.