Taiwanese Flash Forward Entertainment producer Patrick Mao Huang (Cannes-winning “Tiger Stripes”) is screening the psychological thriller “The Sleepless Girl” at the Tokyo Gap Financing Market and is seeking to connect with international partners for a co-production that blurs the line between dreams and reality.
“The Sleepless Girl” is the story of Fan, a Taiwanese man who wakes up with no memory other than a desperate urge to find a Japanese girl named Hitomi. When he finally meets her, he is caught up in a series of surreal events and is forced to live on the run.
Plot twist: Fans look into Hitomi’s mind and discover that he only exists as a created person in her dreams. In Hitomi’s real life, they once shared a deep bond. He was her favorite singer, but he took his own life after being replaced by an AI-generated virtual idol. Now, the girl is in a deep coma, refusing to wake up in a world where she no longer exists.
However, after learning the truth, Hitomi refuses to return to her lonely reality. Her sadness turns into a destructive force, turning her into a monster. Fan must find a way to wake her up before they are both trapped in this nightmare forever.
Director François Chan, who based the film on a short film he made in 2017, says he wanted to explore the boundaries between dreams and reality, and more importantly, between being seen and being heard.
“This movie is about Hitomi, a mute girl who tries to communicate through music, and her former fan, a virtual idol, who now lives only in her dreams,” Chan explains. “Their encounter in her crumbling dream world becomes a metaphor for the loneliness of a generation living between social media and the real world.”
The director added that the story is also about how memory, guilt and projection shape relationships with people you can no longer contact. “I wanted to create an emotional space where invisible pain becomes visible and illusion becomes both a bridge and a barrier.”
The production process required balancing the inherent promise of a short film while creating a compelling genre piece. “This story deals with fragmented memories, language barriers, and digital reincarnation, so we needed to make sure the audience felt emotionally anchored, even when the logic twisted,” says Chan.
The project has gained momentum over the past two years through participation in major development platforms such as Frontiers at Fantasia International Film Festival in Canada, Sundance Asia Pitching Forum, and TAICCA x AFiS Development Lab. Chan was also selected for Talents Tokyo last year.
“These milestones allowed the project to grow significantly. We expanded the world-building while refining the internal logic to make it more emotionally accessible,” says producer Huang. “Our creative focus continues to be on developing strong characters and deepening emotional resonance with today’s young audiences.”
The project has already secured approximately 50% of investment commitments from Taiwan and is progressing with positive momentum. “The main challenge was maintaining a balance between conceptual ambition and human intimacy, but it was also the most fulfilling part of the creative process,” said Huang.
At Tokyo Gap Financing Market, Mr. Huang hopes to connect with international partners who share his project vision. “The project has already attracted strong attention from Asia and Europe, and the Tokyo Gap Financing Forum is the ideal platform to complete financing and secure key creative collaborators, especially as the film is almost entirely made in Japan,” he says. The team aims to strengthen relationships with Japanese producers and begin early conversations with distributors and sales agents who appreciate visually ambitious and emotionally rooted genre films.
Flash Forward Entertainment plans to complete financing by mid-2026 and begin principal photography in Japan by late 2026, with post-production to be based in Taiwan. The goal is for a world premiere at a major international festival in late 2027, followed by a coordinated global festival circuit and theatrical release.
In addition to being a full-length feature, The Sleepless Girl has the potential for sequels, remakes, and games, expanding its world into different formats and cultures. “The story’s central question — what happens when dreams begin to overwrite reality — provides a timeless foundation for reinterpretation and creative expansion,” says Huang.
Mr. Chan is already developing his next project, “Millennium Town.” This is a mystery/science fiction series set in a small town trapped in 1999 after the Y2K problem. “Like The Sleepless Girl, it deals with time, memory and identity, but through a different, fresh and exciting story,” he says.
If “Sleepless Girl” was about inner stillness, “Millennium Town” is about the collective feeling of being “born in the wrong time,” Chan explains. “People are always looking forward to the past and the future, but no one cares about the present. Both stories belong to the same emotional world: how to live an honest and meaningful life in an increasingly unrealistic and crazy world.”
