Korea’s Busan International Film Festival to begin on October 4
Despite a rocky start w, includinghe resignation and dismissal of the festival’s top management and sexual harassment allegations, the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) will begin as scheduled tomorrow.
The festival has managed to put on an impressive edition, both in terms of the programming and the guest attendance, which includes stars such as Chow Yun-fat, who has been named Asian Filmmaker of the Year, Chinese actress Fan Bingbing and Korean actor Song Kang Ho. Also gracing the red carpet will be a long list of top directors including Luc Besson, Ning Hao, Bertrand Bonello, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Lee Isaac Chung, Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Hirokazu Kore-eda.
Notably, the festival was forced to cut down its programme from last year’s 243 films to 209 this year amidst financial shortages, and dropped its annual film conference as well.
BIFF will kick off with the world premiere of Because I Hate Korea, from local filmmaker Jang Kun-jae, and closes on October 13 with Chinese filmmaker Ning Hao’s The Movie Emperor, starring Andy Lau. Gala screenings include Kore-eda’s Monster, Han Shuai’s Green Night, starring Fan, and Bonello’s The Beast.
The BIFF line-up includes the core A Window on Asian Cinema section; Icons, screening 30 titles from the recent festival circuit, including Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anatomy Of A Fall and Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist; Korean Cinema Today, World Cinema, Midnight Passion and Open Cinema, featuring six outdoor screenings including Besson’s Dogman and Karan Johar’s recent Bollywood hit Rocky And Rani’s Love Story.
Through its special programmes, BIFF will spotlight interesting cinematic trends – dedicating two sections to cinema from Indonesia, a current hotspot in Southeast Asia, and Korean Diasporic Cinema, celebrating the work of filmmakers of Korean origin based in North America.
The Korean film fest is also screening a broad array of European and other world cinema through sections including the Galas, Icons, World Cinema, Open Cinema and the Flash Forward competition. The festival also continues to train the Asian filmmakers of the future through the BIFF Asian Film Academy, which this year has Japanese director Suwa Nobuhiro as dean.
