{"id":929704,"date":"2026-10-12T02:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T02:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/929704\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T02:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T02:22:09","slug":"tiger-stripes-producer-backs-uncle-at-busan-asian-project-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/929704\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Tiger Stripes’ Producer Backs ‘Uncle’ at Busan Asian Project Market"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA boy\u2019s devotion to his uncle<\/a>, a man with an intellectual disability, curdles into shame as he grows up and away from home in \u201cUncle,\u201d the first feature written and directed by Taiwan\u2019s Yen Hao-hsuan. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe project is part of the Asian Project Market, which runs within the Busan International Film Festival<\/a>\u2019s Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM).<\/p>\n

\n\tSet in rural Taiwan from 1997 to 2000, the film follows 10-year-old Wen and A-Tsik, the uncle he is inseparable from, in a turbulent household where Wen\u2019s grandfather runs an illegal gambling den on the ground floor. As Wen hits adolescence, his affection turns to embarrassment, while the family\u2019s efforts to police A-Tsik\u2019s behavior and sexuality reveal how little say he has over his own life. With the country rebuilding after an earthquake and going through its first democratic handover of power, Wen starts picturing a life beyond his hometown. When he heads off to school in the city, A-Tsik stays put.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe story is Yen\u2019s own. He lived with his uncle for 18 years, a relationship that moved from childhood closeness to teenage shame to Yen leaving for a better future while his uncle remained unchanged. Yen kept his own life out of his short films, unsure back then whether he could separate honesty from indulgence. \u201cMaking 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\u2019m ready,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Taiwan races toward the new millennium, its hunger for progress propels the boy forward, Yen says, while the uncle never gets that option. \u201cI 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\u2019s worth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYen also wants audiences to meet A-Tsik, and people like him, as equals. \u201cHe is loving, funny, stubborn and difficult. He has sexual desires, falls in love, makes mistakes and can hurt people,\u201d he says. \u201cSociety labels my uncle \u2018abnormal.\u2019 I am not trying to make him \u2018normal\u2019; I just hope this film could make the gap between those two words a little smaller.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film is produced by Patrick Mao Huang<\/a>, who founded Flash Forward Entertainment, and Sung Chin-hsuan, with Flash Forward, wpd films and Soseki Studio presenting. Huang\u2019s credits include \u201cTiger Stripes,\u201d which won the Cannes Critics\u2019 Week Grand Prize in 2023, and \u201cDeep Quiet Room.\u201d Sung\u2019s work spans film, series and immersive media, including 2025 Venice Immersive Grand Prize winner \u201cThe Clouds Are Two Thousand Meters Up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHuang, who had long hoped to work with Yen, says the director\u2019s shorts showed rare command of performance and sound and image, along with an honest grasp of adolescence. \u201cTo grow up is also to abandon something,\u201d Huang says. He believes the film\u2019s emotional core can travel beyond Taiwan.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cUncle\u201d is in development and financing, backed by a Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) development grant, and was developed in the New Director Workshop held this year by the Taipei Film Festival. Yen is now writing a fresh draft and working out the film\u2019s visual style. The project has also been picked for the Tokyo Gap-Financing Market.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Busan, where the project is making its first Asian market outing, 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 wants a financing and creative setup that safeguards Yen\u2019s voice and the film\u2019s Taiwanese character.<\/p>\n

\n\tYen\u2019s 2024 short \u201cCaged Dog\u201d earned a Golden Horse Awards nomination in the live action short category, and his first short, 2022\u2019s \u201cOn Another\u2019s Sorrow,\u201d bowed at the Golden Horse festival. He is finishing his third short, \u201cAccident,\u201d now in post-production, and is toying with a possible second feature or series about Taiwan\u2019s democratization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A boy\u2019s devotion to his uncle, a man with an intellectual disability, curdles into shame as he grows…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":929705,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[82701,31450,49,48,75,337,83630,176878],"class_list":["post-929704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-asian-contents-film-market","tag-busan-international-film-festival","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-patrick-mao-huang","tag-uncle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=929704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/929705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}