There’s no escaping the shadow of Ne Zha at Hong Kong Filmart 2025, whether it be the posters of China’s favorite little demon boy on the bus stops and down on the subway walls across Hong Kong, or in the general chatter around the city’s annual film and TV market.
Ne Zha 2 has scooped more than $2 billion from the global box office, making the Chinese-made sequel the biggest animated hit in history. Now, of course, the industry wants more.
That’s music to the ears of the people behind this year’s Hong Kong International Film Festival’s (HKIFF) Industry Project Market. Whether by a stroke of genius or sheer luck, the project market has this year expanded its program into animation — just as Enlight Pictures’ Ne Zha 2 conquers the world.
“That success seems just to be auspicious,” says Jacob Wong, head of HKIFF Industry, the organization that co-ordinates both the HKIFF Industry Project Market and the Hong Kong — Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF). “Of course, we didn’t plan it that Ne Zha [2] would be such an enormous moneymaker, but it’s good timing. Maybe I should open a business as a fortune-teller for the film industry!”
The two HKIFF Industry-run initiatives have built up an impressive strike rate over the past decade, backing the rural China-set drama Living the Land, which won this year’s Berlin Silver Bear for Best Director for Huo Meng, and, before that, handing some of its prizes to animated productions such as Liu Jian’s Berlinale entry Art College 1994 (2023) and Yee Chih-yen’s Golden Horse Award winner, City of Lost Things (2020).
This year, the HKIFF Industry Project Market and HAF have more than $250,000 to share across 24 cash and in-kind prizes covering 20 in-progress film development categories.
Wong reports that there were around 50 submissions received for the first edition of their animation section. From that number, six have been selected for the animation showcase, with three being works in progress, while there will also be two animation seminars hosted as part of the main FIlmart program.
“We are, I think, happy with the quality,” says Wong. “Because this is the first year, we’ll just see how it goes. I think if it goes well, then we will probably see other project markets doing more animation.”
Among the titles touted as possible winners is the new work from Toe Yeun — the animator behind the Hong Kong favorite My Life as McDull (2001) — who returns with A Mighty Adventure, produced between Taiwan and Malaysia and following the story of three strong-willed insects (a grasshopper, a spider and a butterfly) who try to chart the course of their own destiny.
HKIFF Industry obviously has its eyes on tapping into the overall growth of animation in China, where the market currently generates around $22 billion per year. But there’s action in other Asian markets at the same time, particularly in Indonesia, where industry forecasts have the local animation industry being worth around $6.6 billion by 2026.
“Indonesia is also a major country in Southeast Asia producing animation, especially animation for children, which is a big moneymaker,” says Wong. “There’s a major production line. We’ve also started a small collaboration with Jakarta Film Week and they’re bringing two Indonesian projects over, one of which is an animation.”
That would be veteran game developer Pelixiano’s first foray into animated features, Fly!, which sees a young boy use a magical kite to reunite with his deceased father.
The Jakarta Film Week international festival was first staged in 2021 with the aim of helping promote and expand the growing domestic market, and Wong says he is keen to help introduce local Indonesian productions to the global filmmakers who come to Filmart each year.
“This is the start of something, I think,” says Wong. “In Indonesia, they are now averaging a new film every week. Mostly its genre movies, things that really make money. But there’s also a lot of animation and we thought this would be a good way to connect with them.”
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