APM - Asian Project Market

Asian Project Market 2021 Announces 26 Official Selections

​The Busan International Film Festival (BIFF)’s Asian Project Market (APM), the largest investment and co-production market in Asia, has selected 26 projects for APM 2021.

A record-breaking 429 film submissions and 26 final selections from 15 different countries!​

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APM has completed the selection of 26 film projects for the official Asian Project Market 2021. This year’s 429 submissions, an approximate 20% increase from last year’s record, is the largest number of submissions the APM has ever received, and include a considerable number of BIFF’s Asian Film Academy (AFA) alumni. AFA is an educational program with the aim of discovering talented directors and young filmmakers in Asia. Furthermore, the extensive list of promising female directors in the APM lineup is also receiving much attention.

From new projects by directors discovered by BIFF to the return of skilled directors and producers!

Harumoto Yujiro, who won the New Currents Award at the 25th BIFF for A Balance (2020); Yerlan Nurmukhambetov, the director of the 24th BIFF opening film, The Horse Thieves. Roads of Time (2019); and the return of the duo, Ray Yeung and Michael J. Werner, who collaborated on Twilight’s Kiss (Suk Suk) (2019), an APM film project that generated a great amount of attention due to its invitation to the Berlin International Film Festival, are all directors whose films have attracted much attention.

APM 2021 also highlights a strong female director lineup. Director Kamila Andini, who gained worldwide attention after winning the New Currents Award at the 16th BIFF with her debut film, The Mirror Never Lies (2011), with her new project, Before, Now & Then, and Sigrid Andrea Bernardo, an AFA 2018 alumnus who has continuously spoken out about human rights, women, politics and other social issues, who will present Happy Endings, her 6th feature film at APM 2021, are expected to be enthusiastically welcomed by the audience who has been patiently awaiting their next projects.

Furthermore, Zoe Sua Cho, the producer of the Korean film, House of Hummingbird (2018), who was invited to various prestigious film festivals around the world after receiving the NETPAC Award and the KNN Audience Award at the 23rd BIFF, is collaborating with Nepali-American director Nani Sahra Walker. The directorial debut film of Nguyen Phan Linh Dan, the first female, Vietnamese cinematographer who participated in Secrets of the Wind (2019), a film that was invited to the 24th BIFF, was also selected. Finally, Czech director Mariam Khatchvani, a recipient of the East of the West Special Jury Prize at the 52nd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, had her second feature film, Nene, a movie based on the director’s own life, selected.

Kim Sungsoo, Kim Hee-Jung, Jéro Yun, Kim Bora, Lee Choonghyun, Lee Hwan, Lee Jong-eon, Lim Sun-ae

A large number of new projects by preeminent Korean directors were also selected!

This year, a total of 7 new projects by Korean directors were selected. Christmas Carol by Kim Sungsoo, Where Would You Like To Go? by Kim Hee-Jung, Secret of My Father by Jéro Yun, Spectrum by Kim Bora, Hallucination by Lee Choonghyun, Young-dong Market by Lee Hwan, and Revival Song by Lee Jong-eon, and Fixed Love, Fixed Girl by Lim Sun-ae, were selected. The selected directors are skilled and experienced individuals, have captivated domestic and international audiences with their characteristic styles, and a majority of them have been selected or won an award at BIFF, which are a few factors that are increasing the expectations of Asian film professionals.

Asian Project Market (APM) 2021 will be open for 3 days from October 12th to October 14th, and will be held online for the directors and producers of the projects as well as for international producers, investors, and distributors who will be unable to attend the event in the midst of COVID-19, and it will be held offline for domestic participants. For more information about APM, please visit the official website, http://apm.biff.kr/eng or email apm@biff.kr for further inquiries.

(Updated on 18 August 2021)

Please note that Revival Song by Lee Jong-eon withdrew its selection due to unavoidable personal reason so it is excluded in this year's APM official selection list.