Other People’s Dreams, from Singapore’s Daniel Hui, and Daughters Of The Sea, from the Philippines’ Martika Ramirez Escobar, are among the projects awarded grants in Purin Pictures’ latest funding round.
Both features were awarded $30,000 production grants. In total, Thailand’s Purin Pictures has selected three fiction and two documentary projects for production support, and one fiction project for post-production support in this funding round.
Martika Ramirez Escobar’s debut feature, Leonor Will Never Die, won awards at both the Sundance and Sitges film festivals, while Daniel Hui directed Snakeskin and edited A Land Imagined. Hui’s most recent film, Small Hours Of The Night, a documentary exploring a sensitive time in Singapore’s history, has been pulled from Singapore International Film Festival after local authorities refused to give it a classification.
Malaysian projects also featured highly in Purin Pictures’ autumn 2024 funding round, with Sitora, which will be the feature debut of Malaysia’s Diffan Sina Norman, also securing production support, and Finding Ramlee, from Malaysia’s Megat Sharizal, winning post-production support (see full list and details of grantees below).
Purin Pictures co-director Anocha Suwichakornpong said: “This Fall 2024 session we received a higher than usual number of projects from Malaysia which is encouraging. We ended up funding two, and curiously, both films pay tribute to P. Ramlee, the country’s most iconic filmmaker.”
Sitora, inspired by a lost P. Ramlee film, is billed as a “daylight horror” about a half-man, half-tiger rampaging in the shadows of Kuala Lumpur’s towering expansion. Finding Ramlee is a 1970s-set dramedy about a P. Ramlee impersonator and his run-in with local gangsters.
Two documentaries also received funding in this round – Black River, about a group of merchants who persist with their lifestyle despite changing times, and When A Poet Goes To War, which follows a man who upended his life in response to the military coup in his country. Anocha added: “This was a project with great urgency and the reading committee agreed it needed funds right away.”
Purin Pictures’ call for entries for the Spring 2025 session opens on February 1, 2025.
PRODUCTION GRANTS:
($30,000 for fiction films, $15,000 for documentaries)
Daughters Of The Sea – dir: Martika Ramirez Escobar, prods: Monster Jimenez, Rajiv Idnani
Prod co: Arkeo Films (Philippines)
Synopsis: The story of tour guide Lucia, fish shop owner Delia, and fish vendor Racquel – three lives intertwined like islands, all connected by water.
Other People’s Dreams – dir: Daniel Hui, prod: Tan Si En
Prod co: Momo Film Co (Singapore)
Synopsis: Two runaway souls escaping a dark past meet in the chaos of Singapore, finding a way to survive by stealing, unseen by the public.
Sitora – dir: Diffan Sina Norman, prods: Tara Ansley, Armen Aghaeian, Zurina Ramli
Prod co: Rangka Pictures (Malaysia)
Synopsis: The urban sprawl that surrounds the village of Kiambang is aggressively expanding, forcing its oldest resident to reveal his stripes.
Black River – dir: Tran Phuong Thao, prod: Swann Dubus
Prod co: Varan Vietnam (Vietnam)
Synopsis: Merchants board an old boat to sail and set up temporary markets in the territories of ethnic minorities living in the fringe of Vietnamese society.
When A Poet Goes To War – dir: Aung Naing Soe, prod: Han Yan Yuen
Prod co: 101fps Production (Myanmar, Thailand, Hong Kong)
Synopsis: When peaceful protests fail to sway the country’s dictator, a Burmese poet and his fellow artists pick up arms to fight the military junta.
POST-PRODUCTION GRANTS:
($50,000 for fiction films, $35,000 for documentaries)
Finding Ramlee – dir: Megat Sharizal, prod: Syahid Johan
Prod co: Playground Film (Malaysia)
Synopsis: Zakaria, a struggling P. Ramlee impersonator, juggles his personal life and deceit, forced to live a lie to pay off debts and save his sister’s life.