WHAT HATH HAF WROUGHT?

HAF, the market at the Hong Kong Filmart where producers and directors walk around on their knees begging people to fund their movies because their children need medicine, usually presents about 25 projects and it seems like less than half of those ever see the light of day. This year there were projects from Takashi Miike, Fruit Chan, Zhang Yang, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and a bunch of other big brand names, but what is going to actually get made from all this madness?

Well, it's still too early to tell but they give out monetary awards to some projects, and some projects are already funded, so what do we have to look forward to?

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's caveman film, UTOPIA, got an award as did MAID - THE NEW BEGINNING and the amazing sounding UNSPEAKABLE CURSE OF THE OX FAMILY. Royston Tan's 132 got an award and so did PART OCEAN, PART FLAME.

The only project that looks like it's fully funded at this point is Zhang Yang's AIR (at US$2.5 million) but with production grants and cash in their pockets, these other projects stand a chance of seeing the light of day. AIR is Zhang's black comedy based on a true story about a migrant worker who carries the corpse of his dead friend across China and back to his hometown for burial. Fortissimo has come on board to handle worldwide sales.