Cannes Docs

Runtime: 90'

Expected release: January, 2025

Production stage: Late Production

Budget: €234193.52 (51% in place)

1st feature: No

Looking for: Festivals, Sales Agents / Distributors, Buyers, Co-Producers, Gap Financing, Strategic guidance

Synopsis:

“ALWAYS” foucs on an exceptionally talented child, Youbin Gong, tracking his profound psychological evolution through poetry as he transitions from childhood to adolescence. This film explores the society of children, highlighting their unique ways of expressing themselves within an imaginative world and their gradual loss of innocence as they begin to confront the more realistic adult world.

Director’s profile:

Demin Chen, an independent director and photographer currently based in Beijing. He studied at the Li Xianting Film School. His first feature documentary film “SONG OF SHIRATORI”, which was selected into the 43rd NAFA Nordic Ethnographic Documentary Film Festival and won the Silver Award at the 4th Chinese Ethnographic Documentary Exhibition and the Best Newcomer Award at the Chinese Documentary Academy Awards. Among them, Deming had 18mins short drama “Night Tour” was selected for the 13th FIRST Youth Film Exhibition.

Producer’s profile:

Hansen Lin, born and raised in China, working in China and United States as independent documentary director/producer. He graduated with a master’s degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York, majored in social documentary. His directorial and production project ‘Mountain’s Heart’ (in post-production) won the Special Mention Award in the CCDF-12 IFG project and was featured in the Top 20 ‘China Story’ of the pitching forum held by the Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival.His collaborative works have been published on platforms such as HBO, Amazon Prime, Tencent, and BOSS Zhipin, and have been shortlisted for multiple international film festivals including Sundance, SXSW, and Hotdocs.

Runtime: 100'

Expected release: January, 2025

Production stage: Post-production

Budget: €175 000 (70.62%)

1st feature: No

Looking for: Festivals, Sales Agents, Distributors, Buyers, Co-Producers for post, Gap Financing, Impact Campaign, Marketing and Promo

Synopsis:

“Pony Boys” tracks the lives of young horse handlers as they navigate adolescence while earning a living, offering a poignant coming-of-age tale set against the world of horse tourism in Baguio, a city carved in the mountains of the Philippines. The film quietly confronts the enduring effects of U.S. occupation on a local community, offering a fresh perspective on historical legacies and their implications.

Director’s profile:

Joseph Mangat, a Filipino American filmmaker, who directs and edits documentaries and narrative shorts. He is a Uniondocs & Rockefeller Fellow and Talents Tokyo alum. Mangat received numerous awards, including a student Emmy Award, Kathleen Kennedy Fellowship, SGIFF SEA-Doc Award, and just recently, the SDAFF’s Emerging Filmmaker Award. His debut feature, “Divine Factory,” premiered at the 2022 Dok Leipzig Film Festival and was nominated for the Golden Dove, FIPRESCI Prize, and Prize for Interreligious Jury. It was also selected for the RIDM-Montreal International Documentary Festival and Singapore International Film Festival. Mangat holds a bachelor’s degree in Visuals Arts at the University of California, San Diego where he was mentored by avant-garde filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin. and a Master of Arts in TV, Film, and New Media from San Diego State where he graduated with honors.

Producer’s profile:

Alemberg Ang was a schoolteacher before stumbling into filmmaking. His filmmaking is shaped by his passion for socio-civic issues while providing a voice to marginalized and underrepresented communities. His filmography includes: Whammy Alcazaren’s Bold Eagle about a gay thirty-something online sex worker’s existential angst (2023, Fantasia and NYFF, 2024 Sundance), Chie Hayakawa’s Plan 75 about Japan’s social systems and elderly care (2022, Camera D’or Special Mention, Un Certain Regard at Cannes), Joseph Mangat’s Divine Factory about a Catholic factory and its LGBTQ+ employees (2022, Dok Leipzig) and The Rapture of Fe about a battered wife’s journey into freedom (2009, Best Digital Feature at Cairo IFF). Ang participated at Rotterdam Lab, Berlinale Talents, Locarno Open Doors, IDFA Producers Connection, Institut Francais’ La Fabrique Cinema du Monde and EAVE Producers Workshop.

Runtime: 85'

Expected release: March, 2025

Production stage: Shooting

Budget: €320 980 (30% in place)

1st feature: No

Looking for: Festivals, Buyers, Co-Producers, Gap Financing

Synopsis:

Mufan and Chen Wei are two young aboriginal gender-fluids living in a small mountain village of the Paiwan tribe. Striving to be themselves, they face a conservative and catholic culture imposed on their tribe by Western missionaries that turned them into taboos. As everyone avoids them, they become to each other the only way of understanding the world around them and the only reason to stay alive.

Director’s profile:

Elvis A-Liang Lu is a Taiwanese documentary director. After graduating from the National Taiwan University of Arts (NTUA), he worked as a director and cameraman on several commercial and independent Taiwanese documentaries. In 2017 he released his first feature-length documentary, The Shepherds, revolving around the story of Taiwan’s first LGBT friendly church. The film competed in the documentary section of the Taipei Film festival and was shown in the Sydney World Film Festival and “Euro Kino” Czech Independent Film festival. In 2022, his second feature documentary A Holy Family premiered in the international competition at Visions du Réel, at Lussas and FIPADOC in France, and won best documentary, editing and Grand Prize at the Taipei Film Festival. He is currently working on his next film, The Songs from Within.

Producer’s profile:

Stefano Centini is the founder of Volvos Films (since 2018) and an international co-production producer. After a post-graduate Masters as Creative Producer in Italian National Film Academy, he then completed his education at INALCO with a Master’s Degree in Chinese Language and Culture. Now based in Taiwan, he has produced Absent Without Leave (2016) and Ten Years of Taiwan (2019). Aims on international co-production, Volos Films production include Secrets of the Ocean Tribes (winner of 3 Golden Bell Awards in 2022), A Holy Family (Taipei Film Festival Grand Prize winner, 2022), the first Filipino-Singapore-Taiwan co-production In My Mother’s Skin (Sundance Midnight Section, 2023) and Tomorrow is a Long Time (Berlinale Generation 2023).

Runtime: 90'

Expected release: October, 2025

Production stage: Late Production

Budget: €321 500 (17.5% in place)

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: European and US co-producers, Commissioning editors, Sales agent

Synopsis:

Oma unfolds the story of a family divided by the dark history of Indonesia’s anti-communist purge in 1965. After testifying in the International People’s Tribunal ‘65 The Hague, Oma (Grandmother) Net Markus (84) is finding a way to pass on the family history to Mikael (17), her grandson. Despite Mikael’s curiosity, he is facing a dilemma as his other grandmother is loyal to the anti-communist narrative.

Director’s profile:

Armin Septiexan is a visual artist based in Savu Island, West Timor Indonesia. Oma is his first debut feature-length documentary which he has been filming since 2019. Armin’s previous work focuses on using visual art to communicate in brutal honesty about human rights issues such as Distance (2020) with Asian Justice and Rights (AJAR) about a migrant worker from Kupang, West Timor being a human trafficking victim; The Reunion of Stolen Children (2019) with AJAR about the displaced people during post-war of Timor Leste. In 2022, Armin directed Ammu Hawu, a short animated documentary about how an Indigenous Community in Sabu Island where he lives, is facing challenges in preserving their local wisdom. With his project Oma, Armin has participated in First Cut Lab Philippines (2024), DocEdge Kolkata (2024), Docs by The Sea (2023), and In-Docs Open Table (2023).

Producer’s profile:

Lodimeda Kini, an Indonesian emerging producer focuses on documentaries and animations for science communication and changemaking. Her work includes Water and Society (2020) about water scarcity in West Timor, Ammu Hawu (2022), Kika Ga (2024) a mixed 2D-3D animation about human-nature relationship in Sabunese culture. Armi Rae Cacanindin is the founder and CEO of Popple Pictures, producing both fiction and documentaries from filmmakers with distinct voices. Her project includes the critically acclaimed epic first feature of Carlo Manatad, Whether the Weather is Fine which won the Youth Jury Award in Locarno 2021 and was a big winner at the 2021 Metro Manila International Film Festival, the multi-awarded creative documentary, Aswang, by Alyx Arumpac that won the FIPRESCI award at its IDFA 2019 premiere, and bagged top awards in Montreal, DMZ Docs, Thessaloniki, Jogjakarta and DocAviv.