Asian commissioning alliance, The Asian Pitch (TAP), turns 10 this year, celebrating with a major change in global distribution arrangements and financial backing as well as guaranteed airtime in Japan, Korea and Taiwan for the milestone anniversary’s three winners – Ziad Zafar’s The Rise and Fall of Bhutto, which includes never-seen-before footage of the Pakistani leader; Taiwanese director Kuang-chong Yu’s The Boss, which tracks an unscrupulous businessman across China chasing riches at any and all costs; and Indian journalist Mandakini Gahlot’s Buyers Club, which explores India’s solution to big pharma issues.

The three programmes will be ready by September 2018, and will air on Japanese public broadcaster NHK, Korean public broadcaster Korea Broadcasting System (KBS) and Taiwan’s Public Television Service (PTS) towards the end of next year. Global rights will become available at the same time, with part of the distribution revenue going back to the filmmakers.

TAP, launched in 2007 to support the production of quality factual production in Asia, enters its second decade with the support of NHK, KBS and PTS. Singapore’s Mediacorp was among TAP’s founders but exited in 2016 because of a change in programming strategy.

This year’s winners bring the total number of programmes in the TAP catalogue to 37 titles, across a vast array of topics ranging from funeral rites that drive families in Toraja to extremes (Agung Mulya Setiawan’s The Mummy Thief) and street teachers in Thailand (Pitchapuk Malone’s Street Teachers) to India’s surrogacy industry (Ishani’s K Dutta’s Womb on Rent) and the plight of North Korean defectors in South Korea (Lee Kil Do’s On the Edge of Heaven).

Distribution rights for the TAP catalogue shifts this year from Singapore’s Mediacorp to Nha-Uyen Chau’s boutique TV and film distribution company, Looking Glass International, joining a multi-genre catalogue of history, natural history, science, travel and adventure, lifestyle, arts and culture.

Chau takes over the catalogue at a changing and challenging time for factual producers, who on the whole have way less funding than producers in North America and Europe. She reckons local factual filmmakers have only 25% of the budgets they really need to level the playing field.

At the same time, the appetite for premium content has never been higher, and Asian titles are being picked up by, among others, global players like Netflix and Amazon’s documentary platform Xive TV.

This runs alongside a contraction of former sources of funding, particularly from traditional broadcasters, most of whom are under pressure and are seeing their share of the viewership and advertising pies shrink.

With broadcasters forced to deal with digital disruption and increased competition, “it has become more difficult to get projects off the ground with just a couple of broadcast partners as local commissioning budgets are not the same as they once were,” Chau says.

On the global stage, this can’t be an excuse. Producers in Asia “are expected to produce to the level of their peers elsewhere, punch above their weight both visually and narratively,” Chau says.

“It’s quite challenging to achieve this on such small budgets and few mentors available to them. However, I believe there are the little gems that we discover, because as a result of lack of resources, local producers have had to be resourceful and work around what they have.”

Which is why she took on the TAP catalogue, persuaded too by being able to support filmmakers in their quest to tell unique stories. “Asia,” she says, “is a dynamic region and a jewel for unearthing some of the most fascinating stories that have universal appeal”.