PURIN PICTURES ANNOUNCES
GRANT RECIPIENTS FOR SPRING 2022

MAY 1, 2022 - Bangkok

Bangkok-based film fund Purin Pictures has finalized the grantees for the Spring 2022 session.  After evaluation and discussion of the submissions, the reading committee chose two fiction projects and three documentary projects to support.  A total of 175,000 USD will be given out this session to the following projects:

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

MAGNETIC LETTERS (Philippines)
Director: Demie Dangla, Producer: Philippe Djivas, Pabelle Manikan, Production Company: Pabelle Film Production
A documentary based on decades-old “letters” recorded on cassette tapes between Filipino overseas migrant workers and their families and loved ones back home.

THE MISSING (Philippines)
Director: Carl Joseph Papa, Producer: Geo Lomuntad, Production Company: Project 8 Projects
A horror-fantasy rotoscope animation about Eric, a mouthless man who is forced to confront an alien haunting his present life while untangling his dark past. 

Post-production Grants (50,000 USD in services for fiction, 30,000 USD in services for documentary)

ARNOLD IS A MODEL STUDENT (Thailand)
Director: Sorayos Prapapan, Producer: Donsaron Kovitvanicha, Production Company: Minimal Animal
A drama about Arnold, a high school senior, who gets involved in a scam to cheat the entrance exams to a prestigious military school in Bangkok.  

SMALL HOURS OF THE NIGHT (Singapore)
Director: Daniel Hui, Producer: Tan Bee Thiam, Production Company: 13 Little Pictures 
A drama with two characters: a woman is interrogated by a man over one long night revealing the story of a bizarre tombstone trial in 1980s Singapore.

ONE BIG SUMBA FAMILY (Indonesia)
Director: Tonny Trimarsanto, Producer: Mandy Marahimin, John Badalu, Production Company: Tanakhir Films
A documentary about Martha and her father-in-law MD Raya, a village elder in Sumba, who has 12 wives, 52 children, and 220 grandchildren.

This Spring 2022 session saw a wide range of projects submitted both in terms of the experience of the filmmaker and genre of the film.  After deliberation, the reading committee chose two Filipino, one Thai, one Indonesian, and one Singaporean project to receive grants.  

Says Purin Pictures co-director Aditya Assarat, “In Carl Joseph Papa’s The Missing, we are excited to support an animated film for the first time.  Maybe because of their higher budgets, feature animations are pretty rare in Southeast Asian independent cinema.”  Documentaries continue to flourish in the region and both Demie Dangla’s Magnetic Letters and Tonny Trimarsanto’s One Big Sumba Family focus their lens on characters with very unique and specific cultural experiences.  Finally, rounding out the selection are Sorayos Prapapan’s Arnold is a Model Student and Daniel Hui’s Small Hours of the Night, both anticipated new works from two filmmakers with a promising track record.