How Asian film is making moves to take over from Hollywood

When Indonesian author Jesse Q Sutanto landed a book deal for her novel, Dial A for Aunties, she hadn’t anticipated the film rights immediately being snapped up by Netflix.

The Jakarta-based author describes her debut as ‘Crazy Rich Asians meets Weekend at Bernies’.

She says the tale – about a wedding photographer who accidentally kills off her blind date and then hides the body during an Indonesian society wedding – came along at just the right time.

“Everyone was in need to cheering up, because of lockdown. The over-the-top plot, and the ridiculousness of a dead body and a big wedding is such great escapism. Chinese-Indonesian weddings are amazing, they can have an average of 2,000 guests – my heroine has to hide the body with the help of her mum and aunties.”

Sutanto will executive produce the film; she also chose its director – Nahnatchka Khan – who made Fresh off the Boat, a TV series about Taiwanese immigrants adjusting to life in the USA.

But she believes the film deal would not have happened “without the success of Crazy Rich Asians”.

Crazy Rich Asians, based on a novel by Kevin Kwan, was the first US blockbuster with an all-Asian cast. It made just under £200m worldwide.

Hot on its heels came the historic win for South Korean film Parasite, which was named best picture at the Oscars earlier this year.

So is the shift of cultural power finally moving East?

“Lots of issues are coming together in a perfect storm in 2020,” explains Mike Goodridge, artistic director of Macao’s International Film Festival and Awards, which holds its fifth edition in December.

“China is now officially the biggest film market in the world – there are 1.3 billion people there and that wipes out the US market by comparison. You’re looking at gigantic-sized hits coming out of China – films coming close to making $1bn in China alone.

‘More open to subtitles’

“But there’s also a sea change. In the past, we’ve been at the mercy of what you could call American cultural imperialism – we all used to wait for the next Hollywood blockbuster. They made the movies and showed them throughout the world.

“But streaming services like Netflix and Amazon are about getting subscribers in each country. You can’t just throw Marvel movies at that audience – you have to make local films and TV. They want their own stories.

“And so these US companies are putting money into content creation all over Asia, including a hub in Singapore.”

Goodridge thinks chances are high that there will be another crossover hit from Asia.

“This shift has coincided with the pandemic. We’re not seeing many Hollywood movies, as they have been delayed, so viewers who are at home are focused on a lot of TV or interesting foreign language stuff that we’ve never looked at before,” he says, adding: “We’re more open to subtitles.”

South Korea, whose music industry has already successfully exported K-Pop artists such as BTS to a worldwide fan base, is in pole position to take advantage, following the success of Parasite, the first non-English language film to take top prize at the Academy Awards.

Darcy Paquet, subtitle translator for Parasite and the founder of koreanfilm.org, helped programme this year’s London Korean Film Festival, which opened on 29 October with Korean box office hit Pawn.

Parasite’s global success means two short films which made director Bong Joon-ho famous in his native Korea – 1994’s Incoherence and 2004’s Influenza – have received top-billing at the event.

“Of course, everything Bong Joon-ho makes will now get worldwide attention,” Paquet predicts. “It’s Bong’s style that allowed him to access such a huge audience – but other Korean directors, like Park Chan-wook, have a growing international following.”

“Korea has the highest cinema attendance in the world, per capita. It’s a society that really loves film and their storytelling is sophisticated.

“We can expect other impressive Korean films to make an impact – and now Western audiences might be more willing to take a chance on them.”