Barunson E&A, the Korean sales and production firm behind Palme d’Or-winner Parasite, has closed a raft of sales on upcoming Indonesian horror Respati.
The feature has been picked up for North America by Well Go USA, Exponenta Film for CIS and the Baltics, and with Asian distributors for Taiwan (MovieCloud), Vietnam (Mockingbird Pictures) and Mongolia (Filmbridge).
Base Entertainment, which produced the film, closed further deals for Singapore (Clover Films), Malaysia and Cambodia (Purple Plan).
The story centres on a teenager with the ability to enter other people’s dreams, where he witnesses a murderous dark spirit and quickly connects the killings to mysterious deaths in the real world.
It is directed by Sidharta Tata, whose feature debut Waktu Maghrib ranked as the fifth biggest title at the Indonesian box office in 2023, and is set for release in Indonesia through Base Entertainment on May 22.
As well as securing international sales rights, Barunson E&A also invested in the horror feature, marking just the second investment in a non-Korean title by the company since expanding into international co-production, financing and sales in October 2022. The first was Indonesian action feature 13 Bombs.
Also on the company’s Cannes market slate is Amazon Bullseye, which reunites the writer and stars of Extreme Job, the highest-grossing Korean film to date. Directed by Kim Chang-ju, the comedy stars Ryu Seung-ryong as a former Olympic archery champion whose plane crashes in the Amazon rainforest, where he meets warriors with incredible archery skills. Now in post-production, a release is planned this year.
Base Entertainment’s credits include Joko Anwar’s mystery horror Impetigore, which played at Sundance in 2020; Netflix original series Cigarette Girl; and Trese, which was Netflix’s first original anime series for Southeast Asia in 2021.
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