13TH MPA APSA ACADEMY FILM FUND JURY ANNOUNCED DURING MPA 100TH ANNIVERSARY RECEPTION IN CANNES
Cannes, France, May 19, 2022 – The 13th annual MPA APSA Academy Film Fund was launched Thursday by the Motion Picture Association and Studio Babelsberg in Cannes. As part of the announcement, the Fund partners named the Jury that will determine the winners and opened the call for this year’s project submissions.
Andrew Pike, the Australian film distributor, historian, and documentary filmmaker, will chair the jury determining the 2022 Fund winners. Pike will be joined on the jury by former recipients of the Fund, Thai producer Mai Meksawan (Worship) and Emmy Award-winning director/producer Maryam Ebrahimi (No Burqas Behind Bars).
The Fund is a successful script development program run by the APSA and the MPA. Founded in 2010, the Fund supports both organisations’ goal to increase cultural diversity on screen in the world’s fastest growing region of film production. The Fund is open exclusively to APSA members.
Over the last 12 years, the fund has supported 48 films from 22 countries at the script development stage. It has continued to provide assistance for the region’s filmmakers throughout the pandemic.
“The Motion Picture Association has enjoyed a remarkable partnership with the Asia Pacific Screen Academy of distinguished filmmakers through the MPA APSA Academy Film Fund. The Fund has opened a window on a range of diverse, engaging storytelling from every corner of the region. We look forward to welcoming four new filmmakers and stories with this new round of the Fund,” said Charles Rivkin, Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association.
APSA Chair Tracey Vieira said, “We are proud to support the creativity of the region through our continued partnership with the MPA. As we work to recover from the global pandemic and face the ongoing uncertainty in our region, we proudly recognise the value of art and culture in screen stories. We look forward to the Juries’ selections for the MPA APSA Academy Film Fund in 2022.”
The Fund also celebrated the success of four recently completed films that received Fund support and debuted with high-profile world premieres in 2021:
- No Land’s Man, from Mostofa Sarwar Farooki (Bangladesh), co-produced by and starring Indian star Nawazuddin Siddiqui (APSA 2016 Best Actor for Psycho Raman), premiered at the Busan International Film Festival;
- Kamila Andini’s Yuni (Indonesia, Singapore, France) debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival;
- Uruphong Raksasad’s Worship (Thailand) premiered at the Singapore International Film Festival;
- And Our Memory Belongs to Us (Signe Byrge Sorensen and Rami Farah – Palestine, Syrian Arab Republic, Denmark, France) premiered at CPH DOX 2021.
The news was announced by Jaclyn McLendon, Executive Director of the APSA, and Ridam Janve, recipient of the 2020 MPA APSA Academy Film Fund, at an event celebrating the MPA’s 100th anniversary. Numerous APSA Academy members premiered films in competition and in Un Certain Regard at the 75th Cannes Film Festival.
The winners of the four grants for 2022 will be announced at the 15th Asia Pacific Screen Awards ceremony in November.
-ENDS-
Images: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yyt49mz3cpe716b/AAConk0BvfXuSDeRw_LDAc-fa?dl=0
For more information, please contact:
Stephen Jenner June Tan
MPA Asia-Pacific MPA Asia-Pacific
stephen_jenner@motionpictures.org june_tan@motionpictures.org
MPA APSA ACADEMY FILM FUND – JURY BIOS 2022
Andrew Pike (Australia)
Andrew Pike is a film distributor, historian and documentary filmmaker. His company, Ronin Films, began theatrical distribution in 1974, focusing on films from Asia Pacific and Europe including many Chinese Fifth Generation films in the 1980s, and Japanese classics. The company’s Australian releases include Baz Luhrmann’s BAFTA-winning Strictly Ballroom (1992) and Scott Hicks’ Academy Award®-winning Shine (1996).
His directorial debut was Angels of War (1983), a documentary about Papua New Guinea’s involvement in WWII that won an Australian Film Institute Award. In 2007, Andrew Pike received an Order of Australia Medal and an honorary doctorate from the University of Canberra. For ten years until 2012, he served on various iterations of the Board of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and since 2017 he has been Director of the Canberra International Film Festival. He has Chaired the MPA APSA Academy Film Fund Jury since inception.
Mai Meksawan (Thailand)
Mai Meksawan is a Bangkok-based producer. Prior to founding the production and sales company Diversion in 2014, he was a programmer at Bangkok International Film Festival and co-founder of another production company Extra Virgin. His credits as producer include Manta Ray (dir. Phuttiphong Aroonpheng, 2018 Orizzonti Award for Best Film, Venice Film Festival), Come Here (dir. Anocha Suwichakornpong, 2021 Berlinale Forum), Anatomy of Time (dir. Jakrawal Nilthamrong, 2021 Tokyo FILMeX Grand Prize and premiered at Venice Orizzonti) and Worship (dir. Uruphong Raksasad, 2018 MPA APSA Academy Film Fund). His upcoming projects include Solids by the Seashore (dir. Patiparn Boontarig, first feature film) and Phuttiphong Arronpheng’s latest film Morrison.
Maryam Ebrahimi
The Emmy award-winning producer and director Maryam Ebrahimi was born in Tehran in 1976. She studied Art and Art theory at Art faculty in Tehran and continued her education in Sweden in ’Art in the public realm’ at Konstfck.
Later she started to work as producer, director and researcher in documentary field. She co-directed and produced Nima Film’s 2012 documentary No Burqas Behind Bars, set in an Afghan women’s prison and directed the short documentary Susie’s Dollhouse for Swedish broadcaster SVT.
For Nima Film, Maryam also produced I Was Worth 50 Sheep (2010) filmed in Afghanistan, Those Who Said No (2014) filmed in Iran, Sweden and Japan and Prison Sisters filmed in Sweden and Afghanistan.
Her last feature documentary as director, Stronger than a Bullet, was shot in the border between Iran and Iraq and had premiere at IDFA 2017. Documentary “Born to Struggle”, shot in Rohingya refugee camp, was her last project working with Nimafilm. She is also shooting her new documentary The Phantom pain of Rojava, a film about the women revolution in Rojava, north of Syria. The film is produced by Mantaray Film.
Maryam won the Chicken & Egg Award 2021, an award for women nonfiction filmmakers.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
MPA APSA Academy Film Fund project previous highlights include:
· 2019 San Sebastián International Film Festival Competition & APSA winner – A Dark, Dark Man
- 2018 Cannes Film Festival FIPRESCI Award & APSA winner – Burning
- 2018 Cannes Film Festival, Official Selection & Best Actress winner – Ayka
- 2018 Cannes Film Festival, Official Selection – The Wild Pear Tree
- 2018 Venice Film Festival, Orizzonti Selection & Best Director winner – The River,
- 2018 Venice Film Festival, Orizzonti Selection & APSA winner – Memories of My Body
- 2017 Locarno Festival winner – Wajib
- 2014 International Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary – No Burqas Behind Bars
- 2010 Academy Award® for Best Foreign Language Film – A Separation
ABOUT THE MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION
Promoting & Protecting Screen Communities in Asia Pacific
The Motion Picture Association (MPA) and the Motion Picture Association International (MPA-I) represent the interests of the six international producers and distributors of filmed entertainment. To do so, they promote and protect the intellectual property rights of these companies and conduct public awareness programs to highlight to movie fans around the world the importance of content protection. These activities have helped to transform entire markets benefiting film and television industries in each country including foreign and local filmmakers alike.
The organisations act on behalf of the members of the Motion Picture Association of America, Inc (MPAA) which include: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Netflix Studios, LLC, Paramount Pictures Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., Universal City Studios LLC, and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. The MPA and the MPA-I have worldwide operations which are directed from their head offices in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. and overseen in the Asia Pacific by a team based in Singapore. For more information about the MPA and the MPA-I, please visit www.mpa-i.org.
ABOUT THE ASIA PACIFIC SCREEN AWARDS & ASIA PACIFIC SCREEN ACADEMY
The Asia Pacific Screen Academy proudly presents the region’s highest accolade in film, the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Established in 2007, APSA ignites and honours the cinematic excellence and cultural diversity of the world’s fastest growing film region: comprising 70 countries and areas, 4.5 billion people, and responsible for half of the world’s film output.
APSA and its Academy is committed to its ongoing global partnerships with UNESCO, FIAPF, the European Film Academy (EFA), the Motion Picture Association (MPA), Premios Platino del Cine Iberoamericano, NETPAC (the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema), the Asia Pacific Screen Lab (APSL) and Griffith Film School.
All APSA nominees, Nominations Councils Jury members are inducted into the prestigious APSA Academy presided over by Australian screen legend Jack Thompson AM PhD. The Academy boasts over 1,200 of the region’s leading filmmakers and provides exclusive networking, development and funding opportunities available to Academy members through the MPA APSA Academy Film Fund, and Academy mentoring opportunities for the next generation of Asia Pacific filmmakers through the Asia Pacific Screen Lab.
www.asiapacificscreenawards.com/about-academy
MPA APSA Academy Film Fund recipients
www.asiapacificscreenawards.com/awards/judging-process/mpa-apsa-academy-film-fund-recipients/