MUMBAI: The Asian Cinema Fund (ACF), a key pillar of the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), has unveiled its 14 official selections for 2025 — drawn from a record 850 submissions, up 23 per cent from last year. The picks, spanning three categories, champion fearless storytelling and fresh cinematic forms, offering a snapshot of the region’s creative pulse.

Three projects have been selected under the ‘Script Development Fund’, each awarded KRW 10 million and a spot at the Asian Project Market 2025. Black Star Angel tells the gripping tale of a woman breaking free from war-fuelled trauma. Heaven Help Us! revisits the Manila Film Center disaster with aching intimacy, and New Life maps the emotional terrain between a grieving mother and daughter.

The ‘Post-Production Fund’ shortlist includes four films — two Korean, two from the wider region — all set to bow at the 30th Busan International Film Festival this September. Korea’s Coming of Age dives into class and generational shifts, while The Observer’s Journal serves up a quirky, tense thriller. From India, If on a Winter’s Night interweaves complex love stories, and The River that Holds Our Hands traces displacement and memory across borders.

Meanwhile, the ‘AND Fund’ for feature-length documentaries has backed seven titles with an eye for visual poetry and political poignancy. Korea’s Sea, Star, Woman and Sprouted Potato Lives On explore personal loss and collective memory, while Weathering Architect meditates on Seoul’s vanishing skylines through the lens of veteran architect Joh Sung-yong. From Asia, Kampuchea wrestles with inherited trauma, and Oma profiles a silent yet steely survivor.

The chosen projects — sharp, subversive, and deeply local — promise to elevate Asia’s voice on the global screen. BIFF 2025 runs 17–26 September at the Busan Cinema Center, with the 20th edition of the Asian Contents & Film Market slated for 20–23 September at BEXCO.