Taiwan’s Yen Hao-hsuan has taken his first feature to the Asian Project Market at Busan with a package built to move beyond the festival circuit. Uncle, a coming-of-age story set in rural Taiwan between 1997 and 2000, carries the producer behind 2023 Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prize winner Tiger Stripes — a credential that changes how buyers read a debut project.
A personal story, packaged for partners
Yen lived with his uncle for 18 years, and the film draws on that history. It follows Wen, a 10-year-old inseparable from A-Tsik, his uncle with an intellectual disability. The household is unstable: Wen’s grandfather runs an illegal gambling den on the ground floor. As Wen reaches adolescence, his affection shifts toward embarrassment, and when he leaves for school in the city, A-Tsik stays behind.
That premise is emotionally specific rather than broad. The producers are betting that precision can travel.
Patrick Mao Huang, founder of Flash Forward Entertainment, and Sung Chin-hsuan are producing, with Flash Forward, wpd films and Soseki Studio presenting. Huang’s credits include Tiger Stripes and Deep Quiet Room; Sung’s work includes the 2025 Venice Immersive Grand Prize winner The Clouds Are Two Thousand Meters Up.
- The story: Wen and A-Tsik’s bond becomes distance as Wen grows up, moves to the city and begins imagining a future his uncle cannot share.
- The director: Yen was nominated for a Golden Horse Award in 2024 for the short Caged Dog, and is in post-production on a third short, Accident.
- The ask: Co-production partners in Korea, Japan, elsewhere in Asia and Europe, plus financiers, post-production collaborators, sales agents and distributors.
- The current backing: A Taiwan Creative Content Agency development grant, development in Taipei Film Festival’s New Director Workshop, and selection for Tokyo Gap-Financing Market.
What Busan and Tokyo test
Busan’s Asian Project Market, part of the Asian Contents & Film Market, is a structured meeting point for projects that still need financing and partners. For Uncle, the pitch is not just the story but the layered package: a first-time feature director whose shorts have festival recognition, a producer with a path to Cannes, and agency development money already in place.
Tokyo Gap-Financing Market adds a commercial stress test. Gap financing fills the space between confirmed funding and a film’s budget, often against estimates of unsold territory sales. A first feature in that forum has to answer questions about audience and sales potential before the shoot is fully financed.
The takeaway for our readers
For sales agents, distributors and streamers weighing smaller international dramas, Uncle is a case in how a personal story is being turned into a financeable package without discarding its local texture. Yen says he hopes the film makes audiences think about “who we leave behind, and what we fail to recognize when progress becomes the measure of a person’s worth.” Huang wants a setup that protects the director’s voice — useful language to watch when co-production terms are negotiated.
Source: Variety
