After fourteen weeks of selection, 740 submissions, and a committee that argued itself into existence twice, we are publishing the inaugural Siamese Project Market slate today. Eighty projects. Eighteen countries. Six languages we had to find dialect coaches for.
The slate is split across four categories — Feature, Series, Documentary and Animation — and three production stages: Script (12 projects), Packaging (44), and Production-ready (24). Forty per cent of the slate is led by first or second-time directors. Fifty-two per cent is led, written or produced by women. Every single one is bonded.
It is a deliberately diverse selection. We were not interested in publishing a slate that confirmed any single thesis about what Asian cinema is in 2025. A martial-arts comedy from Vietnam sits next to a 197-minute black-and-white meditation on monsoon from Mai Nguyen-Long. A six-part series about Bangsar bar-owners sits next to a ten-minute pilot for a Thai 2D animation about an elephant trainer. We do not have to agree with each other to be in the same market.
What we looked for
We looked for projects that need this market specifically — not Cannes, not Berlin, not AFM. The Project Market is built for the deals that need to happen between Asian producers and Asian financiers, between South Asian directors and East Asian platforms, between Southeast Asian production companies and the festival circuit they cannot afford to fly to.
The committee scored every project on four axes: artistic ambition, market readiness, team experience, and the answer to one specific question — does this project move from this market with the partner it came in for? If it did not, we did not select it.
What happens next
Selected teams receive their hosted-team packages this week. Pitch slot assignments go out 28 October. The pitch order will be published by 11 November, the Tuesday before the market opens. We will run two online Q&A sessions for buyer teams who want to read scripts in advance — 4 and 11 November.
For everyone who submitted — we read every page. We owe each of the 660 unselected teams a one-paragraph note, and we will get them out before 31 October. We mean that.
“This is the festival market our generation has been waiting for. Bangkok at last makes sense as the centre, not the in-between.”
— Phakphum Romsaithong · Producer, Five-Star Production · Selection Committee
The full slate is published in our Project Market directory. We have grouped projects by region, format and stage. Buyers can begin requesting scripts and meetings via the account portal from today.
We will see you in Bangkok. Bring the projects. We will hold the rooms.