Indonesian filmmaker Makbul Mubarak’s “Autobiography” scooped the top prize at Locarno Festival’s Open Doors Hub co-production forum, which is focused on feature film projects from South-East Asia and Mongolia. Eight producers took part in the Hub, looking for international partners for their films.
“Autobiography,” produced by Yulia Evina Bhara, takes home the Open Doors Grant of CHF 50,000 ($52,000) in production support, granted by the Swiss fund Visions Sud Est, and backed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, SDC, and the City of Bellinzona.
The film centers on 18-year-old Rakib, who is left to look after an aristocratic mansion. The owner, a military general, becomes a surrogate father to the young man. Intensely loyal, Rakib doesn’t hesitate to track down a teenager who has stolen one of the general’s election posters, kicking off an increasingly violent and terrifying series of events.
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Other Hub winners were Vietnamese director Chuyen Bui Thac’s “Glorious Ashes,” which snagged the CNC’s development grant of €8,000 ($9,000), and “Cu Li Never Cries,” from another Vietnamese filmmaker, Pham Ngoc Lan, which won the $6,700 ARTE Kino Intl. Prize, and the Sørfond Award, which comes with an invitation to pitch at the Films from the South festival.
Open Doors Lab, a training workshop for filmmakers and producers, also announced the winners of its awards. Director-producer Quynh Anh Le of Hanoi Doclab in Vietnam won the Rotterdam Lab Award, which will allow her to take part in the Rotterdam Lab training workshop. Her feature projects are drama-black comedy “The Girl in the Doorway,” which she will direct herself, and comedy-drama “A Love Story of Hanoi,” directed by Trinh Quang Minh.
Another Vietnamese filmmaker, Duong Thi Dieu Linh, whose latest project is “Sweet, Salty,” won the Moulin d’Andé-CECI Award, a screenwriting residency for an emerging director.
Open Doors, which is part of the festival’s Locarno Pro industry program, is run in collaboration with SDC, a branch of the Swiss government’s foreign affairs department.