ACFM's Kim Plots Year-Round Platform Amid Funding Freeze — SkimNews
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- Ellen Y.D. Kim is plotting ACFM 365, a permanent year-round database and matchmaking platform that would merge The A Report with the APM and Busan Story Market, with five-year targets including regular publication of The A Report and a standing leaders' forum
- National funding for ACFM has stayed flat for two years running despite 14.4% industry registration growth and 13.5% attendance growth last year, Kim said, calling film "an investment, not a subsidy" and markets "industry infrastructure, not an event"
- ACFM's 21st edition features 339 exhibiting companies from 32 countries and territories, with tech exhibitors rising from 7 to 18 and national agencies and film commissions from 62 to 79; Thailand is the first Country of Honor with 28 exhibitors, Japan has 46 as ProducerHub Focus Country
- Korean box office rose 42% in the first half with Korean films taking 64% of revenue, but Korean commercial films averaged a -33% return in 2025 and there were 22 fewer Korean releases — a "rebound, not yet a structural recovery," Kim said
- The Asian Producers Alliance, led by the Producers Guild of Korea and APROFI, will launch at ProducerHub, alongside new cross-border co-productions including a Thailand-Japan-Korea three-way project (M Studio, Toei, Showbox) and the first financial co-production between Korea and Mongolia
- Streamers are moving from licensing rights to co-financing production per country reports in The A Report; a Korean industry agreement on holdback windows targeted for August did not happen
- Kim warned that if Asia does not own models trained on Asian languages and images, "the IP problem we lived through in the platform era will repeat itself"; one year after InnoAsia's launch, Mateo AI Studio raised KRW2 billion ($1.5 million) in pre-Series A, with its feature "Steelay" opening in Korean cinemas Oct. 20
Why it matters: Kim is repositioning ACFM from a four-day event to permanent industry infrastructure just as cross-Asian co-productions and non-film capital (Indian conglomerates, Mongolian mining firms, Thai broadcaster JVs, Taiwanese telecom-media joint funds) become the new financing lifelines. The flat public funding threatens that ambition precisely when Korean commercial cinema's -33% returns show the box-office rebound is fragile and the collapsed August holdback-window agreement signals unresolved streamer-exhibitor friction.
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