HAF Profiles
Game
Dead, End
30 Days Of Ginger
Dir Lam Tze Chung
Dir Dev Benegal
Dir Teo Eng Tiong
Project’s country of origin Hong Kong
Project’s country of origin India
Project’s country of origin Singapore
Hong Kong actor-director Lam Tze Chung returns to HAF this year with Game, an adventure thriller set on a deserted island. Unlike his trademark comedies, the new project is a story of survival, following a jaded office worker who is lured to spend a week in the wilderness for a life-changing experience, not knowing that he will be chased by wolves and hunted as prey by a group of rich kids. “Wolves will play an important role in the film. I want to use them to reflect human behaviour,” says Lam, who will not act in the film in order to focus on directing. He intends to cast new actors. Filming will be off the beaten track with a jungle, probably in China, as the main location. Due to the difficulties filming with real wolves, wolf dogs will be used and VFX will be employed to make them look more lupine in post-production. The project will be submitted to Hong Kong Film Development Council for funding. On board as producers are Wing Or, who worked on Transformers: Age Of Extinction when it filmed in China, and Ken Hui, a producer on Flora Lau’s Cannes 2013 title Bends. The duo launched a production house, One Tree Films, last year, which has completed its first project I Can Sing by new director Wong Wai. Lam started as a screenwriter at TVB in 1995 before taking up acting. In 2006, he made his directorial debut with I’ll Call You as part of Andy Lau’s Focus First Cuts. His other films include comedies The Luckiest Man and Hyperspace Rescue. Lam took part in last year’s HAF with King Of Shrimp Roe Noodle. WY Wong
Set in present-day India, Dead, End is the story of Abhay, who is officially declared dead despite being alive. The only person who can reverse his death certificate is a bureaucrat in the Governor of Departments (GoD), which handles all matters of land, life and death. Abhay is GoD’s latest victim, done to ‘death’ by his own brothers so they can steal his land. He unites with the other victims of GoD and forms the Dead People’s Society, which tackles an increasingly absurd and comic maze of hurdles to prove he is alive. Currently in pre-production, the film will be shot in and around New Delhi in India. “It’s a side of India noone has seen before, and as a director, I like to tell a story with humour. It can be more expressive than a straight drama,” says Benegal, who is looking for producing partners and sales agents at HAF. Benegal’s debut feature English, August won India’s National Film Award for best English-language feature in 1994 and became the first Indian film to be acquired for distribution by 20th Century Fox. His second feature, Split Wide Open (1999), premiered at Venice Film Festival and was also distributed by Fox. His third feature, Road, Movie, screened at Berlin and Toronto and was picked up by Fortissimo Films for international sales. Benegal’s production company, August Entertainment, is jointly producing Dead, End with Mumbaibased The Satish Kaushik Entertainment (SKE). Founded by actor-producer Satish Kaushik, SKE recently produced Nagesh Kukunoor’s Lakshmi, which premiered at this year’s Palm Springs International Film Festival. Kaushik has also boarded Dead, End as an actor. Nandita Dutta
With 30 Days Of Ginger, Singaporean director Teo Eng Tiong is working with his writer and producer Lim Jen Nee on a film inspired by another of their partnerships — childbearing. After raising two babies, the husband and wife team have twice gone through the Chinese post-partum tradition of ‘confinement’, in which the woman stays at home with no showers, undergoing rituals such as full bodybinding, and adheres to a strict diet including ginger and pig trotters in vinegar to regain her long-term health. The process inspired them to make a film about a modern Singaporean career woman who is forced to go through confinement with her traditional Chinese mother-in-law. “Compared to my first film, which was quite serious and dealt with poverty, this is about new parents taking care of their family in a fish-out-of-water situation,” says Teo, whose feature debut Truth Be Told won best original film at the fifth Asian Film Festival of Rome. “It’s not slapstick or in-your-face comedy. It’s a more lighthearted kind of film that people can relate to.” Although set in Singapore, most of the story will take place indoors. The film-makers are open to co-production and already have Shanty Harmayn and Tanya Yuson attached as executive producers. Teo, who also has a background in computer animation and post-production, teaches at Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s School of Humanities & Social Sciences. Lim Jen Nee also wrote and produced Truth Be Told through Pilgrim Pictures, which is producing 30 Days Of Ginger. The project is a winner of the New Talent Feature Grant from Singapore’s Media Development Authority, which selects first or second feature films for support and is contributing 25% of the total budget. Jean Noh
Game
Dead, End
30 Days Of Ginger
Budget Producers Wing Or, Ken Hui Production companies One Tree Films Budget $2m Finance raised to date $100,000 (Star City Pictures) Contact Wing Or wingor3@gmail.com
Budget Producers Satish Kaushik, Dev Benegal Production companies August Entertainment, The Satish Kaushik Entertainment Budget $1.5m Finance raised to date $150,000 Contact Dev
Producer Lim Jen Nee Production company Pilgrim Pictures Budget $800,000 Finance raised to date $250,000 (equity, MDA) Contact Lim Jen Nee jennee@pilgrimpictures.com.sg
Benegal
n 8 Screen International at Filmart March 26, 2014
dev@devbenegal.com