28th Busan International Film Festival

The 28th Busan International Film Festival (Korean: 제28회 부산국제영화제) opened on October 4 at the Busan Cinema Center in Busan, South Korea. Song Kang-ho of Parasite fame welcomed filmmakers as host of the festival, while Park Eun-bin acted as the moderator of the ceremony, which was broadcast live on YouTube channel and Naver TV. Opening with South Korean film Because I Hate Korea by Jang Kun-jae, 269 films were screened, including 209 officially invited films from 69 countries and 60 community beef screenings. Jung Sung-il, South Korean film critic, director and screenwriter served as chairman of the jury for its main competition section.

BIFF this year opened special program, ‘Renaissance of Indonesian Cinema’ paying attention to Indonesia with 7 feature films and 5 short films, including a series to be released on Netflix. Chow Yun-fat, a Hong Kong star, received the Asian Filmmaker of the Year award, whereas Yoon Jeong-hee posthumously received the Korean Film Achievement Award.

BIFF closed on October 13 with Go Min-si and Hong Kyung acting as master of ceremonies, and the Chinese film industry satire The Movie Emperor by Ning Hao, screened as closing film.

The main award of the festival New Currents Award was given to Bangladeshi film The Wrestler by Iqbal H. Chowdhary, which follows an eccentric old fisherman who trains rigorously in a traditional form of wrestling; and Japanese film September 1923 by Tatsuya Mori, a historical feature marking 100 years of Great Kanto earthquake, which dramatises a massacre that followed the natural disaster.