Vietnamese director Nguyen Phuong Anh’s movie The Third Wife has just won the Non-Hong Kong Project Award at the Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF).

The movie is about the struggle of a young girl who is married to a much older man in an arranged marriage in late 19th-century rural Viet Nam. The film also bagged the White Light Post-Production Award at the same event.

Hong Kong film Vampire Diary, which won in the Hong Kong project category, is a US$1-million comedy that has been directed by Hong Kong’s scriptwriter-turned-director Anthony Yan and produced by veteran TV actor Ha Yu. It tells the story of a school girl and her two little friends who go on an adventure to bring a beautiful 1000-year-old female vampire back to her ancient home.

Two other Hong Kong-related projects also came out as winners. They are Paul Sze Pak-lam’s Hypnotize the Jury, a Hong Kong production that scooped the Network of Asian Fantastic Films Award, and Border Bride, a Hong Kong-China joint-production, directed by Wang Bing, which took the Fushan Documentary Award and also the G2D Post Production Award.

Other winners were Dying to Survive by China’s Wen Muye, which won the iQIYI special award; Brothers by Malaysia’s Jong Yu, which took home the HAF/Fox Chinese Film Development Award; Heaving Raving by Taiwan’s Hsieh Pei-ju, the winner of the HAF Script Development Fund award; and Inking a Last Masterpiece by Japan’s Usuke Uchijima, winner of the Wouter Barendrecht Award; as well as When the Waves Are Gone by the Philippines’ Lav Diaz, which earned the Paris Coproduction Village Award.

At the Autumn Meeting 2015 forum for independent film producers in Da Nang, The Third Wife won the Best Art Film Project title. The forum was initiated by popular director Phan Dang Di, producer Tran Thi Bich Ngoc and playwright Nguyen Thi My Dung.

In the 14th edition of the project, HAF presented 31 film projects in search of finance and production partners. More than 350 submissions have been received this year, which is a record number.

VNS