PURIN PICTURES ANNOUNCES
GRANT RECIPIENTS FOR FALL 2024

NOVEMBER 1, 2024 - Bangkok

Bangkok-based film fund Purin Pictures has finalized the grantees for the Fall 2024 session.  After evaluation and discussion of the submissions, the reading committee chose three fiction and two documentary projects for production support and one fiction project for post-production support.

A total of 170,000 USD will be given out this session to the following projects:

Production Grants (30,000 USD for fiction films, 15,000 USD for documentary films)

DAUGHTERS OF THE SEA (Philippines)
Director: Martika Ramirez Escobar, Producer: Monster Jimenez, Rajiv Idnani, Production Company: Arkeo Films
The story of tour guide Lucia, fish shop owner Delia, and fish vendor Racquel – three lives intertwined like islands, all connected by water.

OTHER PEOPLE’S DREAMS (Singapore)
Director: Daniel Hui, Producer: Tan Si En, Production Company: Momo Film Co
Two runaway souls escaping a dark past meet in the chaos of Singapore, finding a way to survive by stealing, unseen by the public.

SITORA (Malaysia)
Director: Diffan Sina Norman, Producer: Tara Ansley, Armen Aghaeian, Zurina Ramli, Production Company: Rangka Pictures
The urban sprawl that surrounds the village of Kiambang is aggressively expanding, forcing its oldest resident to reveal his stripes.

BLACK RIVER (Vietnam)
Director: Tran Phuong Thao, Producer: Swann Dubus, Production Company: Varan Vietnam 
Merchants board an old boat to sail and set up temporary markets in the territories of ethnic minorities living in the fringe of Vietnamese society.

WHEN A POET GOES TO WAR, (Myanmar, Thailand, Hong Kong)
Director: Aung Naing Soe, Producer: Han Yan Yuen, Production Company: 101fps Production 
When peaceful protests fail to sway the country’s dictator, a Burmese poet and his fellow artists pick up arms to fight the military junta.

POST-Production Grants (50,000 USD for fiction films, 35,000 USD for documentary films)

FINDING RAMLEE (Malaysia)
Director: Megat Sharizal, Producer: Syahid Johan, Production Company: Playground Film
Zakaria, a struggling P. Ramlee impersonator, juggles his personal life and deceit, forced to live a lie to pay off debts and save his sister’s life.  

Says Purin Pictures co-director Anocha Suwichakornpong, “This Fall 2024 session we received a higher than usual number of projects from Malaysia which is encouraging.  We ended up funding two, and curiously, both films pay tribute to P. Ramlee, the country’s most iconic filmmaker.”  Sitora, the debut feature of Diffan Sina Norman, inspired by a lost P. Ramlee film, is billed as a “daylight horror” about a half-man, half-tiger rampaging in the shadows of Kuala Lumpur’s towering expansion.  Finding Ramlee, also a debut feature by veteran TV and theater director Megat Sharizal, is a 1970s-set dramedy about a P. Ramlee impersonator and his run-in with local gangsters.  Besides these, funds also go to films from the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, and Myanmar.  Daughters of the Sea by Martika Ramirez Escobar and Other People’s Dreams by Daniel Hui are both dramas with a touch of the surreal and are both new projects by filmmakers who were previously funded by Purin Pictures.  Documentaries Black River and When a Poet Goes to War on the other hand, couldn’t be more different.  The former explores a group of merchants who persist with their lifestyle despite the changing times while the latter follows a man who upended his life in response to the military coup in his country.  Adds Anocha, “This was a project with great urgency and the reading committee agreed it needed funds right away.” 

The call for entries for the Spring 2025 session opens on February 1, 2025.