Celebrating its 29th edition, the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) returned with a slate that sought to appeal both to cinephiles and casual audiences. While there were still rich pickings for those wanting edgy independent fare, the festival tilted slightly towards broad audiences with its decision to raise the curtain with a star-studded, straight-to-streamer period drama, and the gala screening of a documentary about a K-pop megastar from the boy band BTS.
BIFF seems to be in a transition phase, as it re-navigates its position amidst challenges from domestic and regional festivals and the financial pressure brought on by the government’s decision to halve its sponsorship this year. In this context, BIFF’s decision to expand its film offerings, from last year’s 209 titles to this year’s 224, was indeed courageous.
A celebratory atmosphere engulfed the festival throughout its ten-day run, and the official announcement of a high 84 percent average attendance at screenings seemed like proof that local audiences were pleased with the direction BIFF had undertaken.
Barely had staff swung open the doors of the Busan Film Center on October 2, the first day of the festival, than a group of pro-Palestine protesters appeared with banners and placards, demanding that organisers cancel the screenings of Of Dogs and Men, Israeli filmmaker Dani Rosenberg’s semi-documentary about the aftermath of Hamas’ attack on his country a year ago. With the Busan Film Center largely deserted at that time of the day – it was a Tuesday, and the first screenings wouldn’t started for another couple of hours – the demonstration ended without incident.
Far more eventful was the festival’s official press conference for the opening film, happening across the street. Rather than aiming their questions at the cast and crew of the Netflix-backed historical drama Uprising, Korean journalists besieged BIFF organisers about their decision to open Busan with a big-budget production, one moreover which will skip theatrical release and head straight for the U.S. streaming platform on October 11. Some viewed this as ironic, as one of the festival’s slogans this year is “Theater [sic] Is Not Dead”.
Park Do-sin, one of BIFF’s two deputy directors, admitted the festival has long dedicated its opening-night slot to independent films, but “maybe it is time for a change” to have “a more obviously popular film” as a curtain-raiser. Uprising is one of two Netflix productions bowing at the festival this year, the other being a selection of episodes from the second season of hit TV series Hellbound, the brainchild of Train to Busan director Yeon Sang-ho.
Similar to many of its counterparts in the region, BIFF takes a two-pronged approach in its programming: the Netflix titles formed part of its crowd-pleasing branch. In this category, we could also include the gala screening of Right People Wrong Place, which is a documentary about the production of BTS leader RM’s second solo album; Actors’ House, a series of four public talks featuring young Korean A-list stars; and the explosively colorful spin-off installations and events taking place in the open-air piazza of the Busan Film Centre.
The other face of Busan was shaped by and for film buffs. The programme dedicated to Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes’s films, for example, was perhaps BIFF’s piece de resistance in terms of honouring its cinephile tradition. Though it left out his legendary short films, the showcase was one of the most popular sections of the festival. The director’s two-hour masterclass was a sold-out affair, and he seemed to be enjoying his time at Busan – to the point of actually drinking soju, the favourite beverage of his favourite Korean director Hong Sang-soo, from a plastic bottle during the talk.
Gomes went to great lengths to explain how The Wizard of Oz was the main inspiration behind the bifurcated structure of his films. The audience was delighted: for the young people attending the masterclass, this is a film they knew and could readily identify with, an entry point into his seemingly daunting and elusive body of work. This was what the programmers had wanted too, a sign of the emergence of a new generation of cinephiles.
This is perhaps the raison d’être behind this year’s showcase of Asian coming-of-age films. Made up of nine films from across the continent – among them award-winning titles such as City of Wind, Tiger Stripes, Girls Will Be Girls and Happyend – “Teen Spirit, Teen Movies” offered young audiences an excellent introduction into how programmers tease out additional layers of meaning by placing similarly themed yet markedly different films side by side in a series.
To be fair, the programme did offer a wealth of domestic independent productions. With Works and Days, the winner of the festival’s best documentary award, the directorial duo of Park Min-soo and Ahn Kearn-hyung delivered a poetic and empathetic ode to artisans struggling against the automatization of their trades. Kang Mija’s Spring Night, which bowed in the Korean Cinema Today – Vision section, is an austere and movingly acted two-hander about the tragic love affair between a wheelchair-ridden man (Kim Seol-jin) and an alcoholic (Han Ye-ri from Minari).
And then there was Park Ri-woong’s The Land of the Morning Calm, which won one of the two top awards in the flagship New Currents competition. Revolving around the disappearance of a seaman in a small coastal town, Park reveals the racism and structural inequality bubbling beneath the glittering veneer of 21st century Korea. Featuring a whirlwind performance from Yoon Joo-sang as the vanished man’s captain – and a Vietnam War veteran who was readily mocked by his neighbours for his military service – Park has consolidated his standing as a torch-bearer for Korean social realist cinema today.
Chaired by the now-exiled Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, the five-strong New Currents jury named Myanmar director The Maw Naing’s MA – Cry of Silence as the other winner of the competition. Set nearly entirely within a garments factory and a rickety corrugated-iron shack that serves as a dormitory for young women, the film delivers a chilling account of what life is like in Myanmar today through the ill-fated political awakening of a young, exploited worker. Filmed clandestinely with actors working under made-up names, The Maw Naing’s triumph could be seen as proof of Busan’s ability to pack a political punch.