Thirty years in, and FilMart still knows how to fill a room.
The Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre hummed with a density that attendees said felt more like the market’s pre-pandemic peak than anything seen in recent years – a buzzing, deal-hungry crowd that reflected just how much the appetite for Asian content has grown, and how many new players now want a seat at the table. From Myanmar’s first international market debut to Sri Lankan distributors comparing notes with European buyers, the 30th edition of the Hong Kong International Film & TV Market made a persuasive case that the screen business, for all its anxieties about AI and fragmentation, remains hungry for connection.
“I am meeting friends and new business partners from Turkey, the U.K., the U.S., and even Brazil,” said Timothy Oh, general manager of leading microdrama player COL International Group, a first-time FilMart participant from Singapore. “Hong Kong’s role as an international hub helps create a bustling market with many business opportunities for those looking at innovation and what’s next.”
FilMart and its co-located forum EntertainmentPulse, organized by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), drew roughly 8,000 industry professionals from 53 countries and regions, with over 790 exhibitors from a record 38 countries – including first-time participants from Belgium, Poland, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Uzbekistan.
Here are six takeaways from FilMart 2026.
1. AI Moves From Buzzword to Workflow
Artificial intelligence was the year’s dominant conversation – but the tenor has shifted. Where previous editions treated AI with theoretical enthusiasm, this year’s market found practitioners speaking in more practical, and sometimes cautious, terms.
The returning AI Hub, supported by the Cultural and Creative Industries Development Agency (CCIDA) and the Film Development Fund, showcased companies including Alibaba Cloud, Kling, MiniMax and Vidu alongside academic partners from the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. The newly launched AI Academy offered 19 hands-on workshops covering generative text, audio and animation. At the Golden Rooster Roundtable, organized by the China Film Association and China Film Co-production Corp., AI was cast as a creative “partner.” Meanwhile, Mei Ah Entertainment unveiled a slate of AI-generated short dramas reimagining classic IP for mobile-first audiences, and Red Empire Productions and Organic Media Group bowed hybrid animated vertical series “Home Away AI.i.Ce.”
Yet legendary director Peter Chan Ho-sun offered a more sobering counterpoint at the Producers Connect panel. “I think we’re at the worst times. Those days of the blockbusters are gone. We’re experiencing now what I learned when I went to Hollywood in the late 90s. Nobody knows anything,” said Chan. “With the fragmented markets, with the vertical short dramas, with AI, and with cinemas closing. I think we’re at the worst times.” Chan drew a sharp line between commercial cinema and auteur work: “I don’t think AI is an enemy to auteur film. But AI would be an enemy to mediocre blockbusters. Basically, AI can replace any blockbuster or commercial film in three years, I believe.” He reserved particular scorn for the industry’s reliance on data analytics: “Big data. That’s one of the dirtiest words I’ve ever heard for creative people. A lot of these so-called big data could actually end up killing the film.”
Henry Or, SVP of strategic partnerships, Asia at Boat Rocker Studios, says the divergence in attitude between Asian and Western markets is striking. “If you look at the whole AI development from China, it is more advanced, because it’s something that the government is really leading the whole development for the industry,” he tells Variety. AI dubbing is already widespread in Chinese drama production, he notes, though he adds a caveat about its screen applicability: “China is okay, because 90% of people, they watch content on their mobile. So it’s a small screen.”
Bizhan Tong, a U.K. and Hong Kong-based filmmaker, frames AI as a force multiplying collaboration rather than diminishing it. “The use of AI has emboldened more collaborations to occur, because they see AI not as a tool for removing jobs, but one that can actually save jobs by reducing costs, and therefore enabling more productions to be made,” he says.
Quietly, the technology has spread throughout production workflows, even if few are advertising it. One director noted matter-of-factly that certain generative AI shots in his sizzle reel would be replaced with conventional VFX before release – an admission that spoke volumes about how embedded the technology has become, and how wary practitioners remain of audience or investor scrutiny.
2. China: The Gateway Is Warming, but Not Yet Wide Open
With 355 mainland Chinese companies participating at this year’s FilMart, expectations were high for distribution breakthroughs. The reality proved more complicated.
China remains a heavyweight in the global box office, its market generating approximately $7.4 billion in 2025 and maintaining its position as the world’s second-largest. Year-to-date 2026 revenue stands at roughly $1.58 billion – down 52.9% from the same period last year, in large part because of the outsized performance of “Ne Zha 2” in early 2025 – but still running some $350 million ahead of North America. Local films account for nearly 80% of ticket sales, and the audience itself is transforming: women now make up 60% of cinemagoers, over-25s represent 85% of the audience base, and emerging tier cities are posting double-digit growth.
However, China has maintained an unofficial ban on Korean content – dramas, films and K-pop performances – since 2016, when Beijing imposed the restrictions in retaliation for Seoul’s deployment of U.S. missile defense systems. Diplomatic signals of a thaw have been building: Chinese President Xi Jinping met South Korean President Lee Jae-myung in Beijing in January 2026 and suggested improvement would come gradually. But at FilMart, Korean distributors were still waiting.
Paul D. Kim, CEO of Seoul-based Hive Filmworks, says Korean distributors remain frustrated by persistent barriers. “It’s unfortunate the mainland China censorship is not lifted yet. We were hoping that we meet more Chinese distributors to be able to do the distribution of really good Korean commercial films,” he tells Variety. “We did meet some, but seems like nothing’s gonna move forward for a little longer while, so we are hoping the second half of the year we might be able to do more collaboration with China.”
Yet there are signs of gradual thawing. On the market floor, talk of loosening censorship red lines circulated, with recent mainland screenings of previously unreleased library titles in the horror genre – among them “Alien: Romulus” and “The Shining” – drawing notice as cautious indicators of a shifting content environment.
Diplomatically, the mood is more optimistic. For Tong, the biggest recent catalyst has been political: U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s visit to China, which paved the way for visa-free travel for British citizens from Lunar New Year. “I’ve had meetings where people have just reached out to me and asked me, can we quickly meet in Shenzhen or Guangzhou, and suddenly I can now do that,” he says. Tong adds that his company is currently working with China on both scripted and unscripted projects.
3. Co-productions Find New Momentum – and New Complexity
Cross-border collaboration is rising, driven partly by economics, partly by shifting audience behavior. A new generation of viewers increasingly receptive to subtitles and foreign languages has lowered cultural barriers, while tightening production budgets are making multi-territory partnerships a necessity rather than a luxury.
The Producers Connect initiative – jointly organized by the HKSAR’s Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau, the CCIDA, the Hong Kong Film Development Council and the HKTDC – brought together more than 100 producers from Hong Kong and around the world. At a panel titled “International Coproductions in an Evolving Film Industry Landscape,” producer Janet Yang observed that “the world is getting flatter, language is mattering less and less to audiences everywhere.” Chan, addressing the same session, counseled diversifying investors and partners across regions as essential strategy.
The Shanghai Broadcasting Film & TV Producers Association and the Hong Kong Screenwriters’ Guild formalized their relationship at the market, signing a memorandum of understanding covering co-production, talent cultivation and technological exchange.
Tong, who conducted meetings with partners across Asia during the event, describes the shift in atmosphere as tangible. “In contrast to two recent years, there is a more positive spirit in what we can do together. What we’re seeing is different regions looking to do more international collaborations, more co-productions, and I feel as a result of that, we should be seeing more projects getting made,” he says.
4. Microdrama Goes Global — and Gets Serious
For years, microdrama was a Chinese local story: bite-sized vertical episodes, consumed on mobile, monetized at scale, and largely invisible to Western industry. At FilMart 2026, that story acquired a new chapter.
The format has already overtaken traditional film and television in mainland China in revenue terms, and producers are now pushing hard beyond its borders. Linmon Media arrived at the market with a dedicated microdrama division built on the back of 11 titles in 2025 – 80% of which ranked in the top three in Thai and Indonesian markets – and unveiled a new vertical-format lineup tailored for broader Asian audiences. Mei Ah Entertainment, meanwhile, has been collaborating with Douyin to turn classic films into short-form dramas, using AI to generate new short-form dramas from its classic IP.
The most telling indicator of the format’s maturation, however, was structural. COL Group and Nasdaq-listed BeLive Holdings launched what they described as the world’s first “Microdrama in a Box” — a bundled offering combining cloud-based platform infrastructure with access to a curated content catalogue, designed to let broadcasters, mobile operators and streaming services in emerging markets deploy a branded microdrama platform within 30 days. The proposition is aimed squarely at markets where appetite for the format is growing but the building blocks – content libraries, platform technology and operational know-how – remain out of reach.
EntertainmentPulse dedicated a full session to the format, with speakers from Chinese companies including DataEye, Mansen Culture Media and Xiaowu Brothers dissecting both the production economics and the business models driving expansion. The consensus: microdrama is no longer an experiment. It is an industry.
5. Southeast Asia and New Voices Step Forward
The market’s geographic footprint continues to widen, with Southeast Asia and a wave of emerging-market first-timers asserting themselves with growing confidence.
Myanmar production company aTwentyThree used FilMart as its first international market outing, with founder Arker Soe Oo connecting with distributors from the U.S. and Europe. Sri Lanka’s Mogo Studios, another first-time exhibitor, said the market exceeded expectations.
Filipino producer Wilfredo Manalang of Fusee found the event energizing, particularly around content trends in the region. “There’s a lot of interest in BL [Boys’ Love] stories and BL kind of content from different Southeast Asian countries,” he tells Variety, noting that he also encountered companies actively interested in Filipino content more broadly.
Liuying Cao of Parallax Films China says FilMart proved far more productive than the Berlin European Film Market, attributing the shift to economic conditions that are driving more Asian buyers toward regional events. “FilMart has been quite busy for us – we had almost three and a half days of meetings nonstop. We got some oral offers already through the meetings, and we’re expecting more deals to be done after FilMart ends,” she says.
Her wish list for next year is a more geographically diverse buyer pool. “At the moment, our key buyers come from Southeast Asia, Japan and Korea – very traditionally strong markets. But from other territories, we still got less interest,” she says. “So we hope next year this can be a little bit different.”
6. A Market in Motion – and in Transition
FilMart 2026 felt noticeably busier than recent editions – and more visibly weighted toward Chinese-language content. Panels and presentations were markedly less likely to offer simultaneous translations into English than in previous years, a shift that several English-speaking attendees remarked upon, and which some attributed to budget pressures or evolving trade relations.
Henry Or, who has worked in the film and television industry for three decades, says the market’s identity is evolving alongside the industry it serves. “In Hong Kong, when it was a very good time, we had around like over 100 movies a year. But now, maybe less than 20,” he says. “People may be going less to the cinema because there are a lot more other entertainment for people to watch on different devices.” He argues that FilMart’s future lies in content beyond film: “FilMart is really just the name, but there will be more than just movies in this venue here, because this is where you can really connect yourself to China and to the East as well.”
Ronan Wong, COO and co-founder of AR Asia Production, says the expansion into new formats is creating tangible energy. “We feel the vibe in the different format of content – not only movie, TV, AI format, and also vertical drama is heavily discussed this time,” he says. “Cross-industry cooperation and also using the new technology – we feel fear sometimes, but actually, when we see the result and we use it, we feel it’s a strong tool to improve our efficiencies, and also in terms of costing and monetization.” He is also looking ahead to greater crossover between brands and entertainment content, citing conversations that emerged at EntertainmentPulse’s Marketing Pulse event as particularly promising.
For Paul D. Kim, the market’s overall value holds even as its character changes. “The more efficient people are narrowed down to stay in the market,” he says. “So still productive.”
One notable shift was the reduced presence of European buyers and delegates – a gap that the Middle East conflict goes some way to explaining. Airspace closures across the Gulf region from late February, triggered by military strikes on Iran, forced carriers to reroute Europe-Asia flights around the conflict zone, adding hours to journey times and sending airfares soaring. “People from Europe – I’m not sure if it’s the effect of the war. Before, there were people walking around, you see them everywhere. But now it seems like it’s very Asian-centric in terms of a market,” said Manalang.
Meanwhile, despite Japan’s ongoing diplomatic tensions with China, 37 Japanese companies attended FilMart. At the concurrent Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum, Japan debuted a dedicated Film Frontier section, placing seven Japanese projects across HAF’s strands in a clear signal that Unijapan is pursuing an outward-facing strategy regardless of bilateral headwinds. Japanese projects were among HAF winners.
Hong Kong’s own screen industry provided a reminder of what the city still does best. The flashy launch of “Cold War 1994,” an ensemble period thriller featuring Chow Yun-fat, Aaron Kwok, Tony Leung Ka-fai and Louis Koo, the announcement of a sequel to “Twilight of the Warriors” and a peek at upcoming series “The Season,” generated considerable buzz on the market floor – proof that Hong Kong content, even in a contracted state, retains its capacity to electrify.
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