Busan 2024: The Verdict
From Myanmar workers to K-pop and a swashbuckling Netflix blockbuster, the mood straddled politics and celebration at Korea’s (and possibly Asia’s) largest film festival.
Busan 2024
Busan 2024: The Awards
Park Ri-woong’s South Korean tale of racism and inequality ‘The Land of Morning Calm’ and The Maw Naing’s stirring tale of exploitation in Myanmar, ‘MA – Cry of Silence’, took top honors in the New Currents section.
Journey to Face Them
Hwang In-won makes a case for the unresolved nature of the trauma of sexual assault in her meditative, elliptical first feature ‘Journey to Face Them’.
A Girl with Closed Eyes
Chun Sunyoung’s debut feature ‘A Girl with Closed Eyes’ is a well-made thriller lightly marred by an elaborate third act.
Tale of the Land
Indonesian filmmaker Loeloe Hendra’s feature debut in Busan, ‘Tale of the Land’, is a melancholic, beautifully mounted Borneo-set story about a young indigenous woman who has lived her life in a floating house in the middle of the sea.
Gingerbread for her Dad
Reflective, heartwarming and funny, ‘Gingerbread for her Dad’ is Kazakh filmmaker Alina Mustafina first feature, in which she embarks on a transcontinental journey to search for her great-grandfather’s remains.
Village Rockstars 2
With ‘Village Rockstars 2’, Assamese director Rima Das reunites with the cast of her highly-acclaimed 2017 festival hit in a mesmerizing portrait of a teenage girl guitarist’s struggles with nature and culture in northeast India.
MA – Cry of Silence
The Maw Naing’s second fiction feature, ‘MA – Cry of Silence’, is a riveting cri du coeur about life under authoritarian rule in Myanmar, seen through the struggle of aggrieved factory workers against their abusive employers.
Yen and Ai-lee
Powerful performances from Taiwanese actors Kimi Hsia and Yang Kue-mei anchor Taiwanese filmmaker Tom Lin Shu-yu’s beautifully filmed black-and-white family drama ‘Yen and Ai-lee’.
Kaneko’s Commissary
Bowing in Busan’s New Currents competition, Japanese filmmaker Go Furukawa’s feature-length debut, ‘Kaneko’s Commissary’, offers a delicate, humane and relentlessly life-affirming tale about an ex-con.
