If you thought Bodyguards and Assassins was epic, the story of how it got made will drop you to the floor. One of Hong Kong's most legendary "cursed" productions, it was first shot back in the 60's by producer Peter Chan's father, but it became embroiled in a dispute with one of the financiers. Peter Chan tried to remake his dad's film several times, but it wasn't until the late 1990's that it found its director, Teddy Chen. Since then, it's had three start dates and was even cast and had sets built, but financial disasters, suicides and death kept cutting its legs out from under it.

Development Hell tells the story of Peter Chan and Teddy Chen's struggle to get their super-expensive, all-star project on the big screen. Originally conceived of as a four minute souvenir film for the cast and crew of Dark October (one of the earlier incarnations of Bodyguards and Assassins), director Hiroshi Fukazawa kept expanding his documentary as more and more people stepped forward to tell their story and as the film kept getting greenlit, then fell apart, then got greenlit again. The result is an urgent, in-depth look at the current state of the Chinese film industry and the psychology of a bunch of moviemakers who kept this project alive even as it burned down around them over and over again. And just as you'd expect from a cursed film, director Fukazawa was run over by a car and hospitalized for a mysterious lung condition while making of this documentary.

NOTE: Any injuries sustained by the audience during or immediately after the screening of Development Hell are not the responsibility of the New York Asian Film Festival.