The Hong Kong International Film Festival Society has finalized the program for the 24th Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF), adding 13 projects featuring McDull creator Brian Tse, Sundance winner Alireza Ghasemi and Turkish director Tayfun Pirselimoglu to complete a 42-title lineup set for presentation March 17-19 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.
The final batch comprises seven animated features and six genre works at various development and production stages, joining 29 previously announced in-development and work-in-progress projects. All titles will be showcased at the HKIFF Industry Project Market alongside FilMart, now in its 30th edition.
Three of the newly announced projects are in production or post-production: Brian Tse’s “The Excreman – On the Road,” Avid Liongoren’s “Zsazsa Zaturnnah” and Qin Yuqi’s suspense thriller “What My Bones Know.” The trio will pitch at the WIP Open Pitch session on March 17 alongside the previously announced 12 work-in-progress titles.
HAF’s dedicated animation section, launched last year, has quickly established a track record for festival success. Xu Zao’s “Light Pillar” is set to premiere at Berlinale’s Perspectives section this month, while Toe Yuen’s “A Mighty Adventure” won the Golden Horse Award for best sound effects last November. Both projects emerged from the section’s inaugural edition.
The animation slate features Tse, creator of the McDull franchise, directing “The Excreman – On the Road,” about a massive piece of excrement that defeats a plumber dispatched to cleanse a sewer community, then assumes the plumber’s identity to begin a new human life.
Jhun Yong Duk, co-director of “The Tiger’s Apprentice,” helms “Fish Ball,” following a ruthless general reborn as a sardine who leads an underwater army against predators using military tactics.
Alireza Ghasemi, whose “In the Land of Brothers” won the Sundance World Cinema Dramatic Competition’s directing award in 2024, directs “Rainy Dreams,” a hybrid animation-live action work tracking six displaced children in Calais as they navigate their fears and aspirations through nightly dreams.
Chen Xudong makes his feature debut with stop-motion monster film “Roxanne,” set in a post-apocalyptic ocean and following a boy born at sea searching for humanity’s last hope. The project is produced by Lu Xiaowei, whose “Light Pillar” screens at Berlinale Perspectives this year.
Carl Josep E. Papa, whose “The Missing” won best animated film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards in 2024, directs multi-perspective drama “Sentinel,” centered on a transfer student, editor-in-chief and school principal who clash when a campus newspaper article exposes violence in the school’s military training program.
Producer Isabelle Glachant reunites with director Lei Lei on “Tooth and Tales,” a fairy tale about a boy searching for the story that can heal his toothache. Lei’s “Silver Bird and Rainbow Fish” competed in Rotterdam’s Tiger Competition in 2022.
Liongoren, whose “Hayop Ka!” competed at Annecy in 2020, directs “Zsazsa Zaturnnah,” about a shy gay hairdresser who swallows a space rock that transforms him into a flamboyant female superhero, compelling him to battle zombies and aliens.
The genre slate spans psychological thrillers, body horror and action drama across diverse international settings. Zhou Jinghao, whose “Girl on Edge” screened in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 2025, directs suspense drama “In the Name of Right” about a maintenance worker whose decision to help a struggling employee triggers a fatal accident. Leste Chen produces.
Tayfun Pirselimoglu, whose “Kerr” served as Turkey’s Academy Awards submission in 2023, helms crime thriller “The Power Plant,” following a dangerous liaison between a married meatball vendor and an excavator operator amid mutilated murders in a snow-covered mining town.
Park Kiyong, director of “Gangwondo” in 2021, helms action drama “Searchers: Blood in the Grass,” tracking a Korean apple farmer who teams with his reluctant Mongolian father-in-law to rescue his pregnant wife from a powerful political dynasty involved in international fentanyl trafficking.
Lam Li Shuen, co-director of “Born of the Yam,” which screens in Berlinale Forum Expanded this year, directs mythological body horror “Strange Root” (Keinginan), set in 11th-century Singapore and featuring a demi-god born from a yam who is driven toward violent and erotic confrontation after being cast aside.
Gabriel Motta makes his feature debut with supernatural horror “The Veil,” exploring violence within faith and family through a religious cult founded on fake possession rituals that descends into darkness when a vengeful entity genuinely possesses the pastor’s daughter. Motta’s short film “The Veil” screened at Toronto in 2025.
Qin’s debut “What My Bones Know” is set in a freezing, dying mining town and entangles a college graduate, a terminally ill miner and a runaway accountant, all drawn to a local tavern following the discovery of a severed ear.
All work-in-progress projects will pitch March 17 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre’s Starlight Theatre, with teams presenting 10-minute first looks to industry attendees including distributors, producers, investors, festival programmers and funding representatives.
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