TIFFCOM Adds Frontières Genre Slate to Tokyo Gap-Financing Market — SkimNews
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- TIFFCOM partnered with Frontières — the genre co-production market run by Canada's Fantasia International Film Festival — adding a horror and thriller slate to the seventh Tokyo Gap-Financing Market (TGFM), which runs Oct. 28-30.
- The 24 selected projects span 24 countries across Asia, Europe, South America and North America, and each must include an Asian element and have secured at least 60% of its total budget before attending one-on-one financing meetings.
- The Frontières Showcase features five projects, including a body horror film from Brazilian director Gabriela Amaral Almeida — whose earlier work screened in TIFF competition — and "The Saddest Stories on Earth" from Vietnamese director Diep Nguyen Hoang, returning for a second consecutive year.
- Highlight genre projects include Boo Junfeng's Singapore-set thriller "Trinity" (co-produced with SEAFIC founder Raymond Phathanavirangoon) and Kevin Rahardjo's "The Land of Jinn," based on a Kyrgyz legend from KawanKawan Media.
- Five animation projects are on the slate, including an omnibus horror title from the team behind this year's Annecy Crystal winner "The Violinist" and "Back to Tomioka," adapted from a French graphic novel about the Fukushima nuclear accident.
- A new open pitch event with Imagica Group on Oct. 28 will feature 10 of the 24 projects pitching publicly — five of them from the Frontières Showcase — while TIFFCOM's partnership with Italy's Cinecittà enters its third year with three Italian-Japanese co-productions.
Why it matters: Frontières' first-ever Asian showcase gives genre filmmakers from Thailand, Nepal, Vietnam and beyond a direct conduit to North American co-financing, while the 60%-budget threshold ensures every project in the room is close to greenlight — meaning the meetings that happen Oct. 28-30 are essentially last-mile financing, not exploratory talks.
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