Malaysian producer, Min Lim, is pushing further into international co-production, partnering with Richard Johns’ Argo Films in the U.K. to develop East-West stories for international audiences under new label, Sympatico.

The alliance between Lim’s Kuala-Lumpur-based Double Vision and Argo kicks off with espionage series, "Emergency", in partnership with Fremantle. 

The initial slate of six titles – two TV series and four films – also includes "The Last Kapitan", a series about a son who returns from the dead to exact revenge on the man who wronged him years before – his father.

The third title is "Cabut", a feature film about four Malaysian thieves who hold an American expat family hostage only to discover family members are not who they appear to be.

A second film is "Killing Time", a set-in-Malaysia remake of Richard Johns’ thriller about a female assassin who sets out to avenge the gangster boss who betrayed her.

The two other films are modern-day western, "Tudung Girl", about an underestimated young Muslim woman who tries to keep her family and neighbours alive when four assassins come to town; and "Berjalai", about a local Iban tracker and a British solider, both survivors of a Communist ambush during the Malayan Emergency of the 1950s, who are hunted through the jungle. 

Sympatico expects to go into production this year on at least two of the projects.

This month’s announcement said Sympatico would “develop and produce bold, authentic and entertaining film and television content that smashes stereotypes and organically integrates East and West for global audiences”.

“Too often, Southeast Asia has been portrayed in a mix of styles on screen with, for example, iconic establishing shots of Kuala Lumpur‘s Twin Towers soon giving way to a location that resembles Vietnam, mixed with Hong Kong by way of Vancouver,” Lim says.

She adds that stories set in Asia “are frequently told from a Western perspective with ‘white saviour’ characters leading the charge, side-lining local voices”.