The Busan International Film Festival plans to expand its film screening programme by 8% in what it calls “efforts to maintain the scale befitting Asia’s largest film festival.” This comes despite a 50% cut in government financial support.
The festival will open on October 2 with “Uprising,” a star-studded Netflix historical drama written and produced by Park Chan-wook (“Oldboy”) and directed by Kim Sang-man.
The festival will conclude on October 11 with “The Spirit World” by Eric Khoo, which the Singaporean director shot in Japan with French icon Catherine Deneuve in the lead role.
“Uprising” is about a servant (played by Jang Dong-won) and his master, who is from a noble family with military connections. While they agree that the servant should be free, complications arise. The film also stars Cha Sung-won, Kim Shin-rok, Jin Sun-kyu, and Jung Sung-il. “With Park Chan-wook’s signature humor flowing through a well-woven narrative, filled with intense conflict and tension, the film is driven by a powerful and compelling energy that really stands out,” said the festival’s selection committee.
The festival will award this year’s prestigious Asian Filmmaker of the Year award to Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, whose Cloud recently premiered in Venice, and whose The Serpent’s Path will have its international premiere in San Sebastian. Both films will screen in Busan.
The festival said it will screen 224 films (both feature and short) in its official selection. There will be an additional 55 films in its community programme. To handle the expanded line-up, the festival will use 28 screens across seven venues, including the KOFIC Theatre, near the main festival hub in the Centum area.
Despite the prominent influence of the entertainment sector in South Korea, government funding for the arts has been cut under the current government. The Busan festival has had to seek greater commercial sponsorship and private funding, a task made more difficult after last year’s internal conflicts spilled into the public sphere. In January, the festival appointed veteran Park Kwang-soo as its president, but left Pak Do-sin as its deputy director, and the festival remains without a permanent director.
In the lead-up to Tuesday's press announcement, the festival has already announced a retrospective of director Miguel Gomez's work, a tribute to the late Korean star Lee Sun-kyun, and the launch of the “Teen Spirit, Teen Films” section.
It also revealed the selection of the two main competition divisions, New Currents and Jiseok.
However, other developments, such as the launch of the Documentary Audience Award, worth 10 million won (US$7,500), along with the bulk of the non-competitive programming, remained to be announced.
The festival's five main films go to Kurosawa's “The Cloud” and “The Path of the Serpent,” Jia Zhangke's “Trapped by the Tides,” Gomez's “The Grand Tour,” and Patricia Mazoy's “Visiting Hours.”
