Cannes-Winning Producer Backs Taiwan's 'Uncle' at Busan Market

Patrick Mao Huang, the producer behind "Tiger Stripes," which won the Cannes Critics' Week Grand Prize in 2023, is backing "Uncle," the debut feature of Taiwanese writer-director Yen Hao-hsuan, at the Asian Project Market within this year's Busan International Film Festival's Asian Contents & Film Market.

"Uncle" is a coming-of-age drama drawn from Yen's own life. It traces the relationship between 10-year-old Wen and A-Tsik, the uncle with an intellectual disability he grew up inseparable from, in rural Taiwan between 1997 and 2000. The family household is turbulent: Wen's grandfather runs an illegal gambling den on the ground floor.

As Wen reaches adolescence, his affection for A-Tsik curdles into shame. The family's attempts to police the uncle's behavior and sexuality expose how little control A-Tsik has over his own life. Against the backdrop of Taiwan rebuilding after an earthquake and undergoing its first democratic handover of power, Wen begins to imagine a life beyond his hometown. When he leaves for school in the city, A-Tsik stays behind.

How personal is the story?

Very. Yen lived with his uncle for 18 years, a relationship that moved through childhood closeness, teenage shame, and Yen's eventual departure for a better future while his uncle remained where he was. Yen kept his own life out of his earlier short films because he was unsure he could separate honesty from indulgence.

"Making those short films and the time that has passed since, have given me enough distance to see him as a person, not only as a relative or as a material for a film. Now I think I'm ready," Yen said.

The director frames the story against Taiwan's turn-of-the-millennium transformation. As the country raced toward the new millennium, he said, its hunger for progress propelled the boy forward — while the uncle never received that option.

"I hope the film makes us think about who we leave behind, and what we fail to recognize when progress becomes the measure of a person's worth," Yen said.

What does the director want audiences to see?

Yen wants viewers to meet A-Tsik, and people like him, as equals rather than objects of pity. "He is loving, funny, stubborn and difficult. He has sexual desires, falls in love, makes mistakes and can hurt people," the director said. "Society labels my uncle 'abnormal.' I am not trying to make him 'normal'; I just hope this film could make the gap between those two words a little smaller."

Who is making the film?

The film is produced by Patrick Mao Huang, founder of Flash Forward Entertainment, and Sung Chin-hsuan. Flash Forward, wpd films and Soseki Studio present the project.

Huang's credits include "Tiger Stripes" and "Deep Quiet Room." Sung's work spans film, series and immersive media, including "The Clouds Are Two Thousand Meters Up," which won the Venice Immersive Grand Prize in 2025.

Huang had long hoped to work with Yen. The director's shorts, he said, showed rare command of performance, sound and image, along with an honest grasp of adolescence.

"To grow up is also to abandon something," Huang said. He believes the film's emotional core can travel beyond Taiwan.

What stage is the project at?

"Uncle" is in development and financing. Key milestones include:

• A development grant from the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA)
• Development in the New Director Workshop held this year by the Taipei Film Festival
• Selection for the Tokyo Gap-Financing Market

Yen is now writing a fresh draft of the screenplay and working out the film's visual style.

What is happening in Busan?

The Asian Project Market marks the project's first Asian market outing. There, the producers are courting co-production partners from Korea, Japan, elsewhere in Asia and Europe, along with financiers, post-production collaborators, sales agents and distributors.

Huang said he wants a financing and creative setup that safeguards Yen's voice and the film's Taiwanese character.

Who is Yen Hao-hsuan?

Yen's 2024 short "Caged Dog" earned a Golden Horse Awards nomination in the live action short category. His first short, 2022's "On Another's Sorrow," premiered at the Golden Horse festival. He is finishing his third short, "Accident," now in post-production, and is considering a second feature or a series about Taiwan's democratization.

With Huang's track record of guiding first-time features to major festival prizes and "Uncle" now circulating at two of Asia's key project markets, the film enters financing as one to watch on the region's auteur slate.