2022 MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION – ASIA PACIFIC SCREEN ACADEMY FILM FUND RECIPIENTS ANNOUNCED
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GOLD COAST – The Motion Picture Association (MPA) yesterday partnered with the Asia Pacific Screen Academy (APSA) to announce four recipients of the 2022 MPA APSA Academy Film Fund at an awards ceremony held at the Home of the Arts (HOTA) on Australia’s Gold Coast. Announcing the winners, Belinda Lui, President & Managing Director Asia Pacific, MPA, said the Asia Pacific region continued to provide a wealth of fresh and fascinating stories for the screen: “Since we launched this development fund in 2010, we have opened up a window into the region’s vast, diverse and dynamic world of cinema. The Fund has unearthed bright new voices, provided support to some of the region’s most established and talented writers and directors and led to wonderful films for the world to enjoy. I wish the recipients the best of luck as their projects go through the development period.” APSA Chair Tracey Viera, said, “The APSA MPA partnership is now in its second decade, and its MPA APSA Academy Film Fund continues to support filmmakers in taking the crucial first step in bringing their cinematic story to life – script development. The life cycle of the fund is now at a stage that was originally envisioned, with a continual cycle of supported projects at various stages of development, production, festival premiere and beyond, all over the globe. I congratulate all the recipients in 2022 and look forward to seeing the forward journeys of their projects.” Here are the 2022 recipients of the Fund: Yemen’s first female filmmaker, Khadija Al Salami, will write and direct I Wish I Were a Girl, a feature drama about children who lost their parents in the devastating war in Yemen, and the mental trauma and psychological wounds that haunt these children throughout their lives. Writer-director Kirby Atkins presents Levity Jones, a New Zealand feature film about a teenage girl born without gravity and who has spent her days strapped to a wheelchair in constant fear of “falling up” into the sky. Now she wants to break free from her over-protective parents and create her own life. Norwegion producer, Anne Köhncke, will produce the documentary, A Disturbed Earth – an innovative exercise in the restoration of collective memory from writer-director Rihab Charida. The film sets out to re-build the broken remains and lost memories of her father’s village in Palestine, a community destroyed in 1948. From Singapore-based producer Weijie Lai, The Sea is Calm Tonight is a film that explores a mysterious meeting at sea between the spirits of Vietnamese ‘Boat People’ from 40 years ago with Rohingyan refugees in the present-day. It will be brought to life by Lê Bảo, a significant new force in Vietnamese cinema. The selections were made by the 2022 jury chaired by Andrew Pike OAM, the Australian film distributor, historian, and documentary filmmaker. Pike was joined on the jury by former recipients of the Fund, Thai producer Mai Meksawan (Worship) and Emmy Award-winning director/producer Maryam Ebrahimi (No Burqas Behind Bars). Andrew Pike said, “This year, the MPA APSA Academy Film Fund received 116 submissions from across the full span of the Asia Pacific region, from Hawaii to the Yemen. Submissions ranged from science fiction animation to heart-felt political advocacy, from intimate family dramas to historical epics, and from magic realism to hard-edged documentary. The final four films particularly impressed the Jury and seemed likely to benefit significantly from the Fund’s support. The winners also reflected a strong gender balance between male and female-led production teams and captured the extraordinary diversity of subjects and styles.” Founded in 2010, the Fund is a successful script development program run by the MPA and the APSA, supporting both organisations’ goal to increase cultural diversity on screen in the world’s fastest growing region of film production. The Fund is open exclusively to APSA members. The Fund has supported 52 films from 22 countries at the script development stage. It continued to provide assistance for the region’s filmmakers throughout the pandemic and some of those projects are now in production. View images of the 2022 MPA APSA Academy Film Fund here. View the 2022 MPA APSA Academy Film Fund trailer here. Read about the 2022 MPA APSA Academy Film Fund announcement here. Promoting & Protecting Screen Communities in Asia Pacific The Motion Picture Association (MPA) Asia Pacific represents the interests of the six international producers and distributors of filmed entertainment. To do so, they promote and protect the intellectual property rights of these companies and conduct public awareness programs to highlight to movie fans around the world the importance of content protection. These activities have helped to transform entire markets benefiting film and television industries in each country including foreign and local filmmakers alike. The organization act on behalf of the members of the Motion Picture Association, Inc (MPA) which include: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Netflix Studios, LLC, Paramount Pictures Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., Universal City Studios LLC, and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. The MPA has worldwide operations which are directed from their head offices in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. and overseen in the Asia Pacific by a team based in Singapore. For more information, please contact June Tan |