Taiwanese Debut 'Uncle' Takes Top Prize at Tokyo Gap-Financing Market
Taiwanese feature Uncle has won the Tokyo Project Award at the seventh Tokyo Gap-Financing Market, Variety reported on 30 October 2026. The film is the debut feature of director Yen Hao-hsuan, and the prize was presented at the market in Tokyo.
The market is a showcase for films that are close to being made but still need money. "Gap financing" means the final slice of a budget, the part still missing once the main funding is in place. Projects pitch to producers, financiers and sales companies in the hope of closing that gap.
Uncle also won the Asian Gen-Z Award at the same ceremony. That prize carries JPY500,000, about $3,300. This year, 24 projects were selected for the market.
The film is set in rural Taiwan between 1997 and 2000. It follows a boy who outgrows his uncle, a man with an intellectual disability. Yen based the story on the 18 years he spent living with his own uncle, according to Variety.
The film is produced by Patrick Mao Huang and Sung Chin-hsuan. Mao Huang is the founder of Flash Forward Entertainment, the company behind the project. Earlier in the autumn, Uncle was part of the Busan Asian Project Market, another pitching event for works in development.
Other winners at the Tokyo market included Wild Zero Overdrive, a Japanese-Canadian co-production directed by Takeuchi Tetsuro, which took the White Light Post-Production Award. The Brazilian feature Nature Boy, directed by Matias Mariani, won the Mellow Tunes Sound Design Award.
The market ran from 28 to 30 October as part of TIFFCOM, the content market linked to the Tokyo International Film Festival. This year marks the festival's 39th edition. Submissions for the market opened on 8 May 2026, and the 2026 lineup included a partnership with Frontieres, a genre-film platform run alongside the market.
Awards at these events rarely guarantee a film will reach cinemas. They do give a project attention from the people who decide which films get finished. For a debut film drawn from a director's own family life, that attention can matter a great deal.
