Taiwanese Debut 'Uncle' Takes Top Prize at Tokyo Gap-Financing Market

Taiwanese feature "Uncle" won the Tokyo Project Award on Friday at the seventh Tokyo Gap-Financing Market (TGFM), the co-production platform attached to the Tokyo International Film Festival.

The win capped a double-header for director Yen Hao-hsuan. "Uncle" had already collected the Asian Gen-Z Award, worth JPY500,000 ($3,300), earlier in the same ceremony. Prizes went to a handful of the 24 projects selected for this year's market.

The film is Yen's debut feature. Set in rural Taiwan between 1997 and 2000, it follows a boy whose devotion to his uncle, a man with an intellectual disability, turns to shame as he grows up and leaves home. The story draws on Yen's own 18 years living with his uncle. That's not research. That's memory.

Flash Forward Entertainment founder Patrick Mao Huang produces, with credits including the Cannes Critics' Week Grand Prize winner "Tiger Stripes," alongside Sung Chin-hsuan. The project made its first Asian market outing at the Busan Asian Project Market earlier this month.

What did the jury say?

Jury member Nam Jongsuk — a programmer at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival and managing director of the Network of Asian Fantastic Films (NAFF), an Asian genre-film industry platform — praised the project's directness.

"This project looks at society and bravely goes against prejudices, without sugarcoating the subject," Nam said. He added that the jury hoped Yen would deliver something "uncompromising."

The Gen-Z jury was blunter. Now in its second year, that award is chosen by a committee of five film students from universities and graduate programs, who pick a project appealing to people aged 20 to 28.

"Above all, the jury recognized this as a story that demands to be told right now," the students said of "Uncle." They called the film "resisting simplistic emotional appeals."

Yen said he hadn't expected the win. "I'll take this as the energy to shoot and finish the film," he said.

Who else won at TGFM?

Three other prizes went home from Tokyo:

• White Light Post-Production Award — Japanese-Canadian co-production "Wild Zero Overdrive," from Takegei Company Limited, with $25,000 in post-production services from Thailand-based White Light studio. Directed by Takeuchi Tetsuro, the film follows up his 1999 cult film "Wild Zero" and stars the real-life punk band Guitar Wolf, who headlined the original.
• Mellow Tunes Sound Design Award — Brazilian feature "Nature Boy," directed by Matias Mariani and produced by Primo Filmes, with in-kind sound design services valued at up to $10,000 from Thailand's Mellow Tunes.

"Wild Zero Overdrive" arrived through the Frontières fiction feature selection, part of TIFFCOM's first partnership with the co-production market of Canada's Fantasia International Film Festival. There was no acceptance speech. Instead, winners and presenters alike yelled "rock and roll!" — which, for a Guitar Wolf project, counts as a formal address.

TIFFCOM managing director Ikeda Kaori hosted the ceremony. Nam sat on the jury alongside Meiske Taurisia, a producer at Palari Films, and Paolo Bertolin, a consultant for the Venice Film Festival.

The Tokyo Gap-Financing Market runs as part of TIFFCOM, the content market attached to the Tokyo International Film Festival. For "Uncle," the Tokyo and Busan citations now give Yen's debut real momentum heading into production — and a jury record that suggests buyers will read it as a film with an argument, not just a backstory.