A man who has no memory of his past finds out that a patient is the sister he lost in “Wilderness of the Greenriver,” an animated feature from Barcelona-based Hong Kong director Ellis Kayin Chan that is at the Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) in Taipei.
The film is set in a world where technology lets people wipe out painful memories. When Arin learns that a patient named Zia is his sister, the discovery shakes what he believes and unlocks memories of a childhood he had forgotten. He has to decide whether to uphold the system or embrace his own humanity.
The story is rooted in Chan’s own loss. He says the film grew from a simple conviction: “Pain is not the enemy of being human – forgetting is.”
“I grew up believing that if I stayed calm, if I didn’t feel too much, I could stay safe. When my sister and I grew apart, I tried to erase the pain connected to her. What I didn’t realize was that I was also erasing the tenderness, the care, the love that had shaped who I was,” Chan says. “When I received the news that she had taken her own life, everything I had buried came back at once. I cried like a child. My heart hurt in a way I couldn’t control. And in that moment, I understood something very clearly: pain was not what destroyed me. Pain was what proved that love had existed.”
He adds that the film does not romanticize suffering. “It asks a quieter, more uncomfortable question: if we remove pain to survive, what parts of ourselves do we also erase?”
A Gobelins graduate, Chan recently worked as animation supervisor on “Lost in Starlight,” Netflix’s first Korean animated feature, and has done work for Burberry and Balenciaga. His short films include “Monsoon Blue” and “Bluebird in the Wind.”
The project has already picked up honors. A three-minute proof of concept was made with support from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. In 2025, it took home the top award at Taipei’s Golden Horse Film Project Promotion (FPP), with the prize money going toward writing and development, and at Annecy this year it picked up awards from Ciclic, SACD and Titra in the feature pitches.
Chan is now turning the treatment into a screenplay with writer Clément Roussier, aiming to finish the script in early 2027. Storyboard, casting and editing are slated to wrap by early 2028, animation will run from 2028 into 2029 and a theatrical release is planned for 2030.
The film is produced by Paris-based Eddy Cinéma, one of whose founding members, Nicolas de Rosanbo, serves as executive producer. The company co-produced Louis Clichy’s “Iron Boy,” which won a Special Jury Prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section and the jury and audience awards at Annecy this year, and has worked with Chan since he left Gobelins.
“We have long admired the strong direction, delicate artwork and poetic writing which characterize Ellis’s work, and are delighted to collaborate with him on his first feature,” the producers say.
They see the film as a hopeful story about family and the ethics of technology, with appeal for both family audiences and arthouse viewers. “We believe the film will have a strong market potential in Europe and Asia,” they say.
In Taipei, the team is looking for co-production partners in Asia, animation studios, and distributors and sales companies.
The Taiwan Creative Content Fest, organized by the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA), runs Nov. 6–9 at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center.