Name: Tiger Stripes
Director: Amanda Nell Eu

For most of Asia’s independent producers, the upheavals of the streaming and short-form era have arrived one market at a time, with each national guild answering in its own language. The Asian Producers Alliance, launched at the Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM) in Busan, is a bet that those separate fights are really one fight, and that co-production is the way to win it.

As Deadline’s Liz Shackleton reported, five independent producer bodies are the founders: the Producers Guild of Korea (PGK), the Indonesian Film Producers Association (APROFI), the Philippine Independent Producers Group (PIPG), the Hong Kong Movie Production Executives Association (HKMPEA) and the Taiwan Producers Association (TPA). Their founding declaration states the shift plainly: “For years, we have faced the same changes alone – in our own markets, in our own languages. Today we choose to face them together.”

The early agenda is practical. The alliance aims to support regional and international co-production and to protect creators’ intellectual property, while growing into a consensus body with a formal decision-making structure. It was unveiled at the close of a PGK seminar titled “Empowering Asian Cinema: Solidarity and Creative Alliance” at the ACFM Producers Hub, where Yulia Evina Bhara of Indonesia’s KawanKawan Media, Sidus CEO Rhee Handae and Shin Yamaguchi of Japan’s Knockonwood discussed co-production in an industry reshaped by streamers and short-form content.

The leadership carries production weight. PGK president Lee Dong-ha, who produced Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan, and APROFI chairman Edwin Nazir serve as co-representatives, with Han Jin, director of PGK’s international committee, and Bhara as co-secretaries general. Bhara’s own slate already maps the cross-border model the alliance wants to scale: she produced Makbul Mubarak’s Autobiography, which premiered in Venice’s Orizzonti section, and Amanda Nell Eu’s Tiger Stripes, which bowed at Cannes Critics’ Week. “APA is not a declaration – it is a practice of solidarity that begins now,” Lee said.

The other founders hit the same note. HKMPEA chairman Johnny Wang said producers had been “accustomed to following the paths paved by our predecessors” and were now “embarking on an entirely new and unprecedented journey.” PIPG founding member Bianca Balbuena called APA “a safe space for producers in Asia” at “a time where divisiveness has dominance,” while TPA chairperson Yating Chang said her association looks forward to “connecting with other producers’ associations around Asia.”

APA will meet online every quarter and hold a General Assembly each year during ACFM, where its representatives and secretaries general are elected to one-year terms. Membership is open to other producer bodies across the region and is not limited to one organization per territory. The next gathering is set for the JAFF Market in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in December, under the theme of creators’ IP.

Busan gave the alliance its launch; Yogyakarta gets its first working session, and the subject on the table there is creators’ IP, the one asset every producer around that table has to protect while agreeing to share the work.

Tags: Busan International Film Festival, co-production, Asian Producers Alliance, Lee Dong-ha, Producers Guild of Korea, Yulia Evina Bhara

Asian Producers Alliance launches in Busan as five guilds trade solo markets for co-production

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