Producer Patrick Mao Huang (Cannes winner “Tiger Stripes”) of Taiwan’s Flash Ahead Leisure is presenting psychological thriller “The Sleepless Woman” on the Tokyo Hole-Financing Market, trying to join with worldwide companions for the co-production that blurs the boundaries between desires and actuality.
“The Sleepless Woman” follows Fan, a Taiwanese man who awakens with no reminiscence apart from a compelling urge to discover a Japanese lady named Hitomi. When he lastly meets her, he’s drawn into a sequence of surreal occasions that drive them to dwell on the run.
The twist: Fan examines Hitomi’s thoughts and discovers he exists solely as a determine created inside her dream. In Hitomi’s actual life, they as soon as shared a deep bond – he was her favourite singer who took his personal life after being changed by an AI-generated digital idol. Now the lady lies in a deep coma, refusing to get up in a world the place he now not exists.
However when Hitomi learns the reality, she refuses to return to her lonely actuality. Her grief transforms into damaging energy, turning her right into a monster. Fan should discover a method to wake her earlier than they’re each trapped on this nightmare ceaselessly.
Director François Chang, who’s adapting the function from his personal 2017 quick movie, says he needed to discover the boundaries between desires and actuality, and extra importantly, between being seen and being heard.
“The movie follows a mute lady, Hitomi, who is keen to speak by music, and a digital idol she as soon as liked, Fan, who now solely lives in her dream,” Chang explains. “Their encounter inside her collapsing dream world turns into a metaphor for the loneliness of a era that lives between social media and the true world.”
The director provides that the story can also be about how reminiscence, guilt, and projection form relationships with those that can now not be reached. “I needed to create an emotional house the place the invisible ache turns into seen, the place phantasm turns into each a bridge and a barrier.”
The manufacturing journey has concerned balancing the unique promise of the quick movie whereas creating an enticing style piece. “The story offers with fragmented recollections, language limitations, and digital reincarnation, so we wanted to make sure that audiences nonetheless really feel emotionally anchored even when the logic bends,” Chang says.
The challenge has constructed momentum over the previous two years by participation in main growth platforms, together with Frontières at Fantasia Worldwide Movie Pageant in Canada, the Sundance Asia Pitching Discussion board, and the TAICCA x AFiS Improvement Lab. Chang was additionally chosen for Abilities Tokyo final 12 months.
“These milestones have allowed the challenge to develop considerably – increasing its world-building whereas refining its inside logic to stay emotionally accessible,” says producer Huang. “Our artistic focus stays on growing robust characters and deepening the emotional resonance with up to date younger audiences.”
The challenge has already secured round 50% of its funding dedication from Taiwan and is shifting ahead with constructive momentum. “The primary problem has been sustaining steadiness between conceptual ambition and human intimacy, however that has additionally been probably the most fulfilling a part of the artistic course of,” Huang notes.
On the Tokyo Hole-Financing Market, Huang hopes to attach with worldwide companions who share the imaginative and prescient for the challenge. “The challenge has already obtained robust consideration from Asia and Europe, and the Tokyo Hole-Financing Discussion board is the best platform to finish financing and safe key artistic collaborators – particularly since nearly your complete movie takes place in Japan,” he says. The crew goals to strengthen ties with Japanese producers and begin early conversations with distributors and gross sales brokers who worth visually bold, emotionally grounded style movies.
Flash Ahead Leisure plans to finish financing by mid-2026 and start principal pictures in Japan by late 2026, with post-production based mostly in Taiwan. The goal is a late-2027 world premiere at a serious worldwide pageant, adopted by a coordinated world pageant circuit and theatrical rollout.
Past the function, “The Sleepless Woman” holds robust potential for sequels, remakes, and a sport adaptation, extending its universe throughout totally different codecs and cultures. “The story’s central query – what occurs when desires start to overwrite actuality – provides a timeless basis for reinterpretation and artistic growth,” Huang says.
Chang is already growing his subsequent challenge, “Millennium City,” a thriller/sci-fi collection set in a small city trapped within the 12 months 1999 after the Y2K bug. “Like ‘The Sleepless Woman,’ it offers with time, reminiscence, and id – however by one other recent and thrilling story,” he says.
If “The Sleepless Woman” is about inside silence, “Millennium City” is a couple of collective sense of being “born within the improper time,” Chang explains. “How individuals all the time lengthy for the previous or the longer term, however no one cherishes the current. Each tales belong to the identical emotional universe: easy methods to dwell a truthful, significant life on this increasingly surreal, loopy world.”
