The Asian Contents & Film Market has locked its October lineup, with Thailand and Japan getting spotlight slots and a Kling AI tie-up anchoring the tech push.
The Asian Contents & Film Market, the trade arm of the Busan International Film Festival, has locked down its 2026 program, and the headline act this year isn't a film. It's the software.
Variety reported that InnoAsia, the market's innovation strand, has roped in 44 organisations across 11 programs, with generative AI running through most of them. ACFM has partnered with Kling AI on a session called "New Cinematic Possibilities: Reimagining Filmmaking with Kling AI," complete with its own networking reception. There's also a panel with Eyeline on where AI fits into the filmmaking pipeline, plus an "InnoAsia AI Creators Camp" for people who want to actually build something rather than just talk about it.
Microdrama, the bite-sized vertical-video format that's eaten enormous chunks of streaming attention in China and beyond, gets its own real estate too. Two sessions dig into the format specifically, one tracking its spread from China outward, the other titled "Rags 2 Richmond," which looks at turning a viral microdrama into an actual feature and what that says about where IP is headed next.
Beyond the tech and format talk, the market is organised into seven sections this year, from the long-running Asian Project Market to Doc Square, spread across eight venues over four days.
Thailand is ACFM's first-ever Country of Honor, a newly minted title, and it's bringing five genre features into a pitch strand built around remaking Thai IP for other markets. A parallel program aims to connect Thai filmmakers with investors who don't usually look that way.
Japan takes the Focus Country tag this time, with ten producers pitching projects through Producer Hub in partnership with Vipo. That section's bigger conversation, spanning Korea, Indonesia, Taiwan and Brazil among others, is about how streaming and short-form platforms are rewriting what a producer's job even looks like now.
The money conversations get their own stage under The A section, where distribution executives and investors will compare notes on where Asian film financing is actually heading, not just where everyone hopes it's heading. Doc Square, meanwhile, builds its October 12 centrepiece around the social impact of Asian documentaries, citing case studies like Taiwan's "Small Talk" and Japan's "What Should We Have Done?"
For scale: last year's 20th edition drew 1,222 companies and over 3,000 professionals from 55 countries, with roughly $71.1 million changing hands across 8,438 business meetings. If this year's AI and microdrama push lands the way ACFM is betting it will, that number's the one to watch when the 21st edition wraps.
The market runs October 10-13, folded inside the wider Busan International Film Festival, which spans October 6-15.
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