Netflix today partnered with Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) to host its first ever Creative Asia Forum, attended by 120 filmmakers from across APAC.
Minyoung Kim, Vice President of Asia Pacific Content (formerly India), provided an update on the Netflix Creative Equity Fund. In 2021, the streamer committed $100 million over five years to a fund to strengthen pathways for underrepresented communities in the entertainment industry.
Kim said the streamer has spent about $41 million on 200 programs to date, with more than 13,000 participants in more than 50 countries around the world. Netflix added that more than 450 people who participated in these shows work on the platform’s production in a variety of roles, from line producers and deputy editors to casting assistants and grips.
This year, the foundation is running programs in partnership with local film festivals such as the Jogja NETPAC Asian Film Festival, while content agencies such as Taiwan’s TAICCA are running six-week screenwriting workshops with local writers. .
She also highlighted that Netflix works with production studios to identify skills gaps in the local industry and holds production workshops to fill these gaps.
For example, the Korean team identified VFX and virtual production as two major areas of development for the domestic industry. Since then, they launched the “Grow Creative in Korea” program, which has trained over 2,400 students as part of the streamer’s efforts to develop production talent and transfer knowledge and technical skills in virtual production, color, and dubbing. did.
Earlier this week, in conjunction with BIFF, Netflix announced its 2025 Korean movie lineup. These included director Yeon Sang-ho’s “Apocalypse”, “Train to Busan”, and the sci-fi disaster film “The Flood” starring Kim Da-mi. ‘, Park Hye Soo’s ‘Squid Game’, etc.
Born for the Spotlight screenwriter and director (and former actress) Yan Yiwen also attended the Creative Asia Forum and spoke about the Mandarin series.
“I’ve been an actress for 20 years, and during that time I really wanted to win an award. I won it in 2015, but I had to go back to the set the day after the ceremony. ” said Yen. “But my mindset changed and I realized that I couldn’t continue like this. I was playing mediocre characters with mediocre titles and mediocre scripts. Suddenly I realized that I didn’t deserve to win awards. So that day I went home and started writing a script about an actress who loses her acting ability after winning an award.”
That story will become “Born For the Spotlight,” which will premiere on the platform on November 7th.
Ms. Yen also talked about the changes she has seen in Taiwan’s entertainment industry over the past few years.
“Before, actresses didn’t have many choices for roles, and four or five years ago, when I was around 40, I was wondering if there was an age limit for certain roles,” Yen added. “I decided to write my own story about a middle-aged woman to tell the story I want to see.”
Olive Ting, producer of Born for the Spotlight, said that as viewers become more exposed to different genres and formats of programming, the industry’s stories are moving away from traditional formulas. They agreed that they were becoming more ambitious.
“About 20 years ago in Taiwan, most stories were romantic, and there was always the cliché that the female protagonist was waiting for the love of a rich, handsome man,” Ting said. “Changes in the arts in Taiwan coincide with changes in society. We are thrilled that there are so many options and we don’t have to follow traditional storylines. We appreciate the openness, which allows us to explore more ambitious projects.”
At the Japan panel, Beyond the Farewell director Hiroshi Kurosaki talked about how his background in documentaries shaped his approach to directing fictional love stories. “Beyond Goodbye” is the story of Saeko, who loses her beloved Yusuke in an accident on the day of his proposal. Another man, Naruse, transplants Yusuke’s heart and breathes new life into him.
“I wanted to create a fantasy love story,” Kurosaki said. “But I told everyone that in order to make this a beautiful and believable love story, it needed to be five centimeters higher than reality, not ten centimeters higher.”
As part of his research for the show, he spoke to surgeons who perform heart transplants and asked them about the concept of “memory transfer,” which became a key part of the series.
At the Indonesian panel, Cigarette Girl co-directors Kamila Andini and Ifa Isfansyah spoke about the 12-year journey to adapt Rati Kumara’s novel of the same name into a series. The series jumps between two eras: the 1960s and the early 2000s, telling the story of a family business involved in Indonesia’s clove cigarette industry.
“For me, this story is all about the strength of women, especially during the show, when women didn’t have many opportunities,” Andini said. “This is a time to recognize the strength of women, and we wanted to create a space for that.”
