Far East Film Festival of Udine opens Focus Asia for Works in Progress

24 April / 2 May 2020 – Udine – Teatro Nuovo & Visionario

FAR EAST FILM
FESTIVAL 22

THE FEFF'S INDUSTRY SECTION, FOCUS ASIA,
OPENS ITS DOORS TO WIPs (works in progress)!

The FAR EAST FILM FESTIVAL becomes the only European Platform dedicated to Asian films in post-production.

UDINE - With Far East in Progress - the brand new section which will open its doors in April 2020 - the Far East Film Festival of Udine will become the first and only European platform dedicated to Asian films in post-production: films which are almost finished and are looking to find a sales agent to represent them internationally – and which are aiming at the big summer/autumn festivals like Locarno, Venice, Toronto, Busan and Tokyo. Favoured by its strategic location (central Europe) and its timing (a few days before the Cannes festival and market), Far East in Progress will stimulate new synergies between the two continents.

As well as creating a bridge between works in progress and possible international buyers, the aim of Far East in Progress will also be to attract increasing numbers of European sales agents and representatives of Festivals from around the world to Udine.The selection committee will be headed by Marie-Pierre Valle of Wild Bunch, and the deadline for registering projects is the 10^th of March. 

Far East in Progress will reinforce and be a natural continuation of Get Ready for Cannes, the special showcase in Udine which each year allows a select number of sales agents to present previews of their new line-ups to international buyers and the programmers of European and Asian festivals who are in town for the FEFF. It's obvious that an event like this ten days before the opening of Cannes represents a very appetising opportunity for any sales agent, as well as highlighting Udine's increasing centrality in the European cinema panorama.

Both Far East in Progress and Get Ready for Cannes are integral parts of Focus Asia, the festival's industry section, which celebrates its fourth birthday in 2020 and which each April brings over 200 cinema professionals from all over the world to Udine. Focus Asia also has its own project market – All Genres Project Market – dedicated to the "films of tomorrow" with strong potential for European and Asian co-production and co-financing. The project market will be held from the 29^th of April to the 1^st of May, 2020 – bang in the middle of the Far East Film Festival 22 - and projects can be registered online (http://bit.ly/FocusAsia2020) until the 15^th of February. 

“Once again this year,” says  Sabrina Baracetti, the Far East Film Festival's president, “we're expecting a large number of submissions of fiction projects from all over the world, from extreme genre cinema to auteur projects, in the hope of exploring and forging ever stronger links between the two continents's cinema industries and growing the FEFF's reputation as regards the film market”.

And let's not forget that the fourth edition of Focus Asia confirms once again our partnership with representatives of some of the most important genre film festivals, who will be involved first-hand in the selection of the projects, and renews the festival's collaboration with Eave and European Film Promotion.