Taipei Film Festival is aiming to shine an international spotlight on Taiwanese actors through a new initiative, Top Talents, that will showcase nine actors including major stars Kai Ko and Chen Bolin.
Other actors selected for the initiative include Chen Yi-wen, who won a Golden Horse Award for A Sun; Taipei Film Award winners Hsu Wei-ning and Gingle Wang; Caitlin Fang who won best newcomer awards at both Golden Horse and Taipei Film Awards for American Girl; and Golden Bell Award regulars Hsueh Shih-ling, Esther Liu and Tseng Pei-yu.
Collaborating with Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA), the festival drew up a longlist from more than one hundred actors who had won prizes at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards, Golden Bell Awards, which focus on TV production, and Taipei Film Awards.
The final list was selected by a committee of seven filmmakers including Taipei Film Festival director Li Ya-mei, executive producer Lee Lieh, international co-production experts Michelle Yeh, Aileen Li and Patrick Mao Huang, Sony Pictures Releasing Taiwan managing director Ken Yu and film director Tom Shu-yu Lin.
“We aim to introduce more and more outstanding actors to the overseas audiences and production companies, helping them shine on the world stage,” said Taipei Film Festival in a statement.
The nine actors will be promoted as part of TAICCA’s international activities at events including Busan International Film Festival and Singapore’s Asia TV Forum & Market (ATF).
As part of the promotion, some of Taiwan’s top stylists and photographers have produced a set of professional portraits, while director Kassey CM Huang and Bird of Paradise Films have produced a series of promotional videos shot in English or French.
Taipei Film Festival director Li Ya-mei explained that Taiwan’s film and TV industries have recently focused on pitching, co-production and sales activities in an attempt to reach international markets, but that Taiwanese actors also have potential to attract attention, along similar lines to stars from South Korea and Japan.
“Now the audiences love watching Japanese and Korean films and dramas. Didn’t most of them start with being attracted to the stars? In the heydays of our film and television industries, we exported so many productions to the world thanks to those big stars,” Li said.
Kai Ko, who won best new performer at the Golden Horse Awards for You’re The Apple Of My Eye in 2011, is a big star across the region and recently made his directing debut with Bad Education. Chen Bolin is also a major star in both Taiwan and mainland China’s film industries, with credits including anthology Distance, the Chinese adaptation of Miss Granny and TV series In Time With You.
Taipei Film Festival is currently underway (June 22-July 8). While the event was able to take place during the pandemic, this is the first year since 2019 that international guests are able to attend.
As an island, Taiwan managed to keep tight control over Covid infection rates during the pandemic, but also kept it borders tightly closed. Last year’s Taiwan Creative Content Festival and Golden Horse Film Festival were the first major events to welcome international guests.
