Can Southeast Asian Indie Cinema Continue Its Momentum In 2023?

I’m not sure why I thought that compiling a list of upcoming projects from Southeast Asia, and looking at recent tweaks to the region’s funding programmes, would be a quick and easy job to do. It has taken weeks to compile, and while I finally stopped at 30 projects, I could have kept going, which probably means there’s a lot of activity in the region.

Following the last edition of Streamlined, which looked at the success of Southeast Asian indie cinema over the past few years, this edition asks how sustainable that success is, given current market realities and the special circumstances of the region. Writing it made me realise that it’s impossible to make predictions. All Streamlined can do is track the journeys that other people are brave enough to make.

And speaking of journeys, congratulations to two Southeast Asian films that have found a safe harbour at least: Kenneth Dagatan’s In My Mother’s Skin, which just got picked up by Amazon Prime ahead of its Sundance premiere, and Jow Z…