HAF PROFILES


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Megurashi-ya Japan Dir: Koji Hagiuda


on 2007’s musical drama Genius (Shindo), which had its world premiere at the Hong Kong International Film Festival. The team is returning to Hong Kong with Megurashi-ya,


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a project based on Toshiyuki Horie’s serialised stories. The narrative follows a lonely 38-year-old woman named Fukiko who — after her father’s death — learns of the unique service he offered: as a ‘megurashi-ya’ he would provide a space for people looking for respite from overwhelming domestic strife and allow them to think out their problems. Fukiko decides to continue her father’s work. Though the occupation in the


‘I wanted to make a more “analogue”


relationship film’ Hiroyuki Negishi, producer


film is a fictional one, it depicts a very real need in stressful modern-day Japan. Producer Negishi says of the motivation


to adapt the story: “In this age of social networking I wanted to make a more ‘analogue’ relationship film, depicting the odd one-on-one bonds developed in the space characters escape to in the story.” Negishi also collaborated with Hagiuda and Sadai on


Hagiuda’s adaptation of Akira Saso’s manga Child By Children, about an 11-year-old girl who becomes pregnant. Following that film Sadai, president of Japanese production company Bitters End, and former Picnic Pictures producer Negishi set up joint production company Matchpoint, which is producing Megurashi-ya. They will look for finance and production partners at HAF. Jason Gray


MEGURASHI-YA


Budget $1.2m Finance raised to date $200,000 Contact Yuji Sadai, Matchpoint, sadai@matchpoint-inc.com


n 12 Screen International at Filmart/HAF/HKIFF March 21, 2011


egurashi-ya marks the third collaboration between director Koji Hagiuda and producers Hiroyuki Negishi and Yuji Sadai, who first worked together


Root Of Love Hong Kong Dir: Adam Wong Sau-ping


time and the path not taken. After hearing the song Root Of Love on an old friend’s


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blog, a wife looks back wistfully at her school days. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn the wife, the present-day blogger and the man she eventually married were all friends at high school — and that she could easily have ended up with both of the boys in the love triangle. Back in the present, she wonders if she married the


wrong guy, but when she contacts the third friend, she discovers his life did not turn out the way he expected. “Many Hong Kong movies give the impression the past


is better than the present, but I want to deliver the message that if the old times were good, it is possible to bring that goodness into the present day,” explains Wong. The song will be a strong selling point for the local


audience as many Hong Kong people grew up listening to Alan Tam’s song. However Wong adds that while the setting and context are very local, “the themes about the passage of time are very universal”. The story is scripted by Saville Chan, Wong’s long-time writing partner and also business partner in Hong Kong production company Eye Front Pictures, which is producing the film. Wong’s first feature, When Beckham Met Owen (2004),


was a coming-of-age story featuring a same-sex crush, while his second film Magic Boy (2007) was described as a fresh twist on Hong Kong’s youth-oriented romance genre. Both those films were financed independently, but were


produced by Hong Kong film industry veteran Eric Tsang. For Root Of Love, Wong is working with Teddy Robin, another industry legend, who is a keen supporter of up-and-coming talent in Hong Kong.


Liz Shackleton ROOTOF LOVE


Budget $1m Finance raised to date None Contact Adam Wong Sau-ping, Eye Front Pictures, atm_812@yahoo.com.hk


sing a 1980s Canto-pop classic as its starting point, Adam Wong Sau-ping’s Root Of Love follows a married couple as they grapple with the passage of


Like A Flowing River South Korea-France Dir: Shin Dong-il


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n acclaimed director who likes to highlight the paradoxes in Korean society with irony and humour, Shin Dong-il has finished the script of his fourth


feature, which he dubs “a green or eco-friendly road movie”. Like A Flowing River tells the story of a privileged student


who runs from her father’s pre-funeral mourning vigil. Distraught and guilty over a secret, she stumbles into the taxi of a failed film producer and the pair embark on a road trip which covers the Nakdong River area and the man’s hometown, where the government’s Four Rivers Project is destroying the local way of life and the ecosystem. “I don’t really make socio-political films out of a sense


of responsibility,” Shin explains. “Korean society is strewn with dynamic subject matter and it interests me.” A graduate of the Korean Academy of Film Arts, Shin’s


short The Holy Family played at Cannes in 2001. The festival’s Cinefondation selected him to work on what turned out to be his second feature, 2008’s My Friend & His Wife, in its 2003 Residence programme. The film screened at Busan, Hong Kong and Karlovy Vary. Shin’s 2005 feature debut Host & Guest was lauded by


critics at Busan and screened at the Berlinale, as well as winning the grand jury prize for best new director at the Seattle International Film Festival. Bandhobi, a controversial interracial drama about a teenage girl and an immigrant labourer, completed the director’s Relationship Trilogy in 2009 and won the best film prize at the Nantes Three Continents Film Festival. Like A Flowing River’s main production company is


Seoul-based Biashin Pictures, through which Shin produced The Holy Family, Host & Guest, Bandhobi and Herstory Taking, a segment for human rights omnibus If You Were Me 5. Biashin is partnering with producer Guillaume de Seille and his Paris-based Arizona Films. Jean Noh


LIKEAFLOWING RIVER


Budget $500,000 Finance raised to date none Contact Biashin Pictures, biashin2@naver.com


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