By Naman Ramachandran According To The variety Hong Kong veteran filmmaker Stanley Kwan Kam-pang has thrown his weight behind “A Stranger at My Door,” the sophomore fiction feature from director Zheng Lu Xinyuan. The film is selected for the Hong Kong — Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF), the project market that operates concurrently with Hong Kong FilMart. The drama, which carries a budget of $1.1 million, explores themes of trauma and healing through the story of Lee, an amateur film director working on a project about her late mother’s sexual abuse while navigating the end of a long-term relationship. The film, set to be shot in Putonghua and English, follows Lee as she finds solace in Clément, a French composer, while dealing with the haunting presence of her ...

By William Earl According To The variety Dan Berk and Robert Olsen grew up obsessed with the golden era of ’80s action movies, worshipping box office hits like “Midnight Run,” “Lethal Weapon” and “Die Hard.” When they came across the script for a high-concept film named “Novocaine” — in which a mild-mannered man named Nate can’t feel pain and has to save his love interest from violent bank robbers — they loved the idea. But they were eager to add the humor and pathos that elevated their favorites. “There was something about those films where they’re very funny, yet they don’t lose their stakes,” Olsen says. “They’re not such a comedy that they don’t care about the characters. They have protagonists you get to know.” Luckily, Berk and Olsen, who had previously written and directed ...