JAFF Market 2025 Powered by Amar Bank has announced a robust lineup for its JAFF Future Project, featuring ten fiction and documentary titles from across the Asia-Pacific. This year’s selection showcases filmmakers whose works capture the region’s creative diversity, cinematic innovation, and growing spirit of cross-border collaboration.
JAFF Future Project 2024
Running from 29 November to 1 December 2025 at the Jogja Expo Center (JEC), Yogyakarta Indonesia, the second edition of JAFF Market continues to expand its role as a meeting ground for Southeast Asia’s filmmakers, producers, and financiers. As part of the broader 20th-anniversary celebration of the Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival (JAFF), the Future Project serves as a development and co-production hub designed to propel new independent works toward completion and distribution.
This year’s selected projects were chosen through a highly competitive open-call held from 1 August to 1 September 2025, attracting submissions that reflect the region’s evolving narratives, social complexities, and cinematic innovation. The curation brings together early-stage fiction and documentary works that demonstrate both strong artistic identity and cross-border collaboration potential.
The projects include acclaimed Korean director, Park Kiyong return to the filmmaking with Ghost Island, produced by Ho Yuhang, whose film project The Silent Village won two prizes at JAFF Future Project in 2024, the upcoming feature of Eddie Cahyono with My Mother after the success of his last feature SITI, which was shown in Telluride and won numerous awards locally and internationally and Australian director, Aaron Wilson whose previous works Canopy and Little Tornadoes was a hit at various international film festivals.
In its second consecutive year, JAFF Future Project renewed its partnership with the Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) and mylab, extending pathways for creative exchange and professional mentorship between Asia and Australia.
“In this second-year partnership, we continue to open pathways for filmmakers across Asia and Australia to engage in meaningful exchange in sustaining the region’s independent film ecosystem,” said Mat Kesting, Chief Executive and Creative Director of the Adelaide Film Festival. “Together with JAFF Market’s commitment to supporting early-stage projects, we are helping build a more connected creative landscape across the Asia-Pacific,” added Lorna Tee, JAFF Market Advisor & mylab Curator.
Throughout the three-day market, participating filmmakers will present their works in curated pitching sessions and one-on-one meetings with producers, investors, and industry partners. The initiative focuses on bridging creative ambition with financing and production realities, positioning JAFF Future Project as a launchpad for regional co-productions and global festival exposure.
To further encourage collaboration and project realization, selected participants will also compete for a range of industry awards and support packages presented by JAFF Market’s official partners, including The United Team of Art (TUTA Films), Visinema, White Light, Kongchak, Brandlink, and Prodigihouse Ecosystem. These awards offer opportunities for post-production services, development support, and regional co-production access, reflecting JAFF Market’s growing network of institutional and private sector partners committed to advancing Asian cinema.
The curation process was carried out by the Selection Committee comprising filmmaker and comedian Ernest Prakasa, producer Fauzan Zidni, and producer Tia Hasibuan who evaluated submissions based on storytelling strength, creative vision, feasibility, and market readiness. Selected projects represent an eclectic mix of genres and voices from intimate personal narratives to socially charged documentaries, unified by a shared drive to redefine the language of Asian cinema.
“Our selection process goes beyond curating stories,” said Linda Gozali, Market Director of JAFF Market. “It’s about identifying creators who can inspire new partnerships and push their projects toward realization. Through JAFF Future Project, we see this as a long-term investment in creative infrastructure, one that connects filmmakers to international networks, development labs, and co-production partners, ensuring that promising ideas don’t remain on paper but evolve into impactful works.”
By amplifying early-stage development and regional collaboration, JAFF Future Project reinforces JAFF Market’s broader mission to establish Yogyakarta as a strategic hub for Asian independent cinema, a place where creativity, industry access, and cross-cultural dialogue converge. As part of this vision, industry professionals are invited to gain accreditation and meet the selected filmmakers at JAFF Market 2025, where new partnerships will take shape and the next generation of Asian stories will begin their journey from concept to screen.
