Vietnamese producer/distributor, BHD Co Ltd – Vietnam Media Corp’s 20th anniversary celebrations move into high gear in early November during the annual Hanoi International Film Festival (HANIFF).

The festival runs in Hanoi from 1-5 November.

BHD, which also operates six domestic cineplexes and has another two scheduled for 2017, leads the festival’s Project Market in cooperation with the government-backed Cinema Department of Vietnam.

The Project Market’s aim is to match producers, directors and scriptwriters with investors, funding bodies such as the World Cinema Fund, and film festival organisers.

The projects chosen in the competition, aimed at new directors/script writers/producers, have the opportunity to be partially or fully funded.

Three projects from the Asia Pacific region will be chosen in the international section, and five projects will be chosen in the domestic section.

BHD said in the run up to the event that the aim was to give participants the opportunity to present to and learn from professional filmmakers in development markets such as the U.S. and Europe.

The festival’s opening film is Ken Loach’s 2016 Palme d’Or winner, I, Daniel Blake, about a 59-year-old carpenter forced onto state welfare after a heart attack.

The screening programme also includes Brand New Testament (2015), about a girl fed up with her overbearing father, who happens to be god; Interrogation (2016), which is India’s entry to the 2017 Academy Awards; Chinese drama Wolf Totem (2015); German director Joachim Trier’s Louder than Bombs (2016), about a man grappling with his dead wife’s legacy; and Hungarian thriller, Son of Saul (2015).

BHD’s involvement in Vietnam’s media industry kicked off in 1996 with music show Nhung Bai Hat Con Xanh, which aired on state-backed free-TV broadcaster VTV three times a week. The show ran to 1998, returning in 2015 in a new format.

In 1997, BHD started distributing international pay-TV brands, and, in 2001, ventured into movie production for the first time with feature film Song of the Stork. The film went on to win the best feature at the Milano Film Festival 2002.

“Song of the Stork proved that if handled in a proper way, Vietnamese movies can score well in different markets worldwide,” says BHD co-founder Ngo Thi Bich Hanh.

BHD subsequently produced The White Silk Dress (2006) with a budget of US$2 million. The award-winning film remains one of the most costly titles ever made in Vietnam.

The company bought local rights to Korean drama Yumi My Love in 2002, venturing into foreign TV distribution for the first time. The series aired on VTV3 in Vietnam.

The following year, BHD added documentary production, and in 2004 produced its first game show based on a foreign format.

FremantleMedia format, The Price is Right (Hay Chon Gia Dung), premiered on VTV3 in 2004 and ran to 2016. A second signature FremantleMedia format, Vietnam Idol, premiered in 2010. Five seasons of the singing competition format have been produced so far. Vietnam’s Got Talent arrived in 2011; so far four seasons have been produced.

Big-budget formats have become a staple, with five seasons of The Amazing Race Vietnam and three seasons of MasterChef Vietnam since 2012, along with Big Brother, a kids version of Vietnam Idol (2016) and Junior MasterChef (2016).

BHD produced its first TV drama series, 39 Degrees of Love, in 2005. The 16-episode drama aired on HTV7, and was followed by a local version of Ugly Betty (Co Gai Zau Xi, 2008) and Suddenly I Wanna Cry (2009).

Published on 31 October 2016