The Songs from Within

Runtime: 85'

Expected release: March, 2025

Production stage: Shooting

Budget: €320 980 (30% in place)

1st feature: No

Looking for: Festivals, Buyers, Co-Producers, Gap Financing

Synopsis:

Mufan and Chen Wei are two young aboriginal gender-fluids living in a small mountain village of the Paiwan tribe. Striving to be themselves, they face a conservative and catholic culture imposed on their tribe by Western missionaries that turned them into taboos. As everyone avoids them, they become to each other the only way of understanding the world around them and the only reason to stay alive.

Director’s profile:

Elvis A-Liang Lu is a Taiwanese documentary director. After graduating from the National Taiwan University of Arts (NTUA), he worked as a director and cameraman on several commercial and independent Taiwanese documentaries. In 2017 he released his first feature-length documentary, The Shepherds, revolving around the story of Taiwan’s first LGBT friendly church. The film competed in the documentary section of the Taipei Film festival and was shown in the Sydney World Film Festival and “Euro Kino” Czech Independent Film festival. In 2022, his second feature documentary A Holy Family premiered in the international competition at Visions du Réel, at Lussas and FIPADOC in France, and won best documentary, editing and Grand Prize at the Taipei Film Festival. He is currently working on his next film, The Songs from Within.

Producer’s profile:

Stefano Centini is the founder of Volvos Films (since 2018) and an international co-production producer. After a post-graduate Masters as Creative Producer in Italian National Film Academy, he then completed his education at INALCO with a Master’s Degree in Chinese Language and Culture. Now based in Taiwan, he has produced Absent Without Leave (2016) and Ten Years of Taiwan (2019). Aims on international co-production, Volos Films production include Secrets of the Ocean Tribes (winner of 3 Golden Bell Awards in 2022), A Holy Family (Taipei Film Festival Grand Prize winner, 2022), the first Filipino-Singapore-Taiwan co-production In My Mother’s Skin (Sundance Midnight Section, 2023) and Tomorrow is a Long Time (Berlinale Generation 2023).