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Upcoming projects from award-winning filmmakers Nelson Yeo, Patiparn Boontarig, Kenneth Dagatan and producers of Cannes drama Viet And Nam are among the selection for this year’s Network of Asian Fantastic Films (Naff) market.

Held during South Korea’s Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (Bifan), some 37 titles from 22 countries have been selected for the project market, which runs July 6-9 alongside Asia’s largest genre festival. One-to-one meetings will take place with producers, investors, and distributors.

Titles in the It Project selection include Vietnamese horror The Heirloom, set to be the feature directorial debut of Le Hoang from the producers of Viet And Nam,...

Abu Shahed Emon, a Bangladeshi filmmaker with close ties to Busan, is back at the festival with “No Ground Beneath the Feet,” directed by debutant Mohammad Rabby Mridha. He braved two weeks of quarantine to be in Busan in person.

The film, which premieres at the festival’s ‘A Window on Asian Cinema’ strand, follows the travails of an ambulance driver in Dhaka and the struggles of his wife in a slowly shrinking river delta, while tackling universal themes of climate change, poverty and societal ills. The cast includes Mostafa Monwar, who won best performance at the 2016 Singapore International Film Festival for “Live from Dhaka”), Priyam Archi and Deepanwita Martin (“Made in Bangladesh”).

Emon has been busy during the pandemic and will continue being so in the months to come. As a producer, he has a raft of films in various stages of production via his Golpo Rajjo Films.

Drama...

The National Film Development Corporation (Nfdc) announced the 12 participants selected for the first Directing for Directors Lab, a two week residential program to be held from January 19-31, 2014. The venue finalised for the residential program is Courtyard by Marriott, Bund Garden, Pune.

The full time two week program will be conducted by Udayan Prasad, professor of Directing at the UK’s Nftvs -National Film and Television School and Lfs-London Film School. Prasad is the director of well-known films such as My Son the Fanatic and The Yellow Handkerchief.

The selected participants are:

1. Sadik Ahmed – 7 Stages

2. Vasant Nath – Sebastian wants to Remember

3. Geetha J – A Certain Slant of Light

4. Prabhijit Dhamija – I’m Not There!

5. Kiran Waval – Tada (Crack)

6. Anoop Mathew – Roach

7. Shazia Iqbal – Me vs Ray

8. Amit Agarwal – Ek Lambi Surang (The Long Tunnel)

9. Harsh Narayan – Ye Pyar Na Hoga Kam

10. Vidyasagar Adhyapak – Chitpat

11. Aditya Kelgaonkar – Duniya Hai Ek...

The National Film Development Corporation (Nfdc) has announced the list of 26 projects selected for its annual co-production market, a part of Nfdc Film Bazaar held on the sidelines of the International Film Festival of India (Iffi), Goa.

Film Bazaar will be held from November 21-24, 2012 in Goa.

Here is the complete list of selection:-

1. Arunoday by Partho Sen Gupta (Producer: Rakesh Mehra, India)

2. Antaraal by Umesh Kulkarni (Producer: Girirsh Kulkarni, India)

3. Titli by Kanu Behl (Producer: Dibakar Banerjee, India)

4 . Superboudi by Q, Kaushik Mukherjee (Producer: Celine Overdose, India)

5. Kabuliwala by Atiq Rahimi (Producer: Sunil Doshi, India)

6. Court by Chaitanya Tamhane (Producer: Vivek Gomber, Zoo Films, India)

7. The Untold Tale by Shivajee Chandrabhushan (Producer: Shivajee Chandrabhushan, Bombay Berlin Productions, India, Moteur S’il Vous Productions, France)

8. Jabalpur Tapes by Jogavindra S Khera (Producer: Aditi Anand, India)

9. Bhopal Live by Yash Dave & Alison Patel (Producr: Parijat Entertainment, India)

10. Girls by Gul Dharmani (Producer: Shimit Amin,...

Bangladeshi western? As odd as it might sound, that’s exactly what we’ve got with Sadik Ahmed’s The Last Thakur. Here’s how the London Film Festival described it:

UK film-maker Sadik Ahmed directs this intense contemporary Western, which takes place in a remote town in the marshlands of Bangladesh. A mysterious young man, Kala, arrives armed with a rifle. He immediately creates a stir in the small town and especially attracts the attention of two rival leaders: the ruthless and powerful Chairman who runs the place and purports to represent his people and the one man that stands in his way: the local Thakur, one of the last Hindu landlords, who is manically re-claiming all the surrounding land for which loans remain un-paid in order to build a temple.

Walking into the middle of this bitter feud, Kala soon finds himself approached by both men to take their side.