Busan Film Festival Back On Track With Star Power & Strong Line-up Following Management Turmoil

Chinese director Ning Hao has flown directly from Busan film festival in South Korea to China’s Pingyao International Film Festival (PYIFF) with his latest film, The Movie Emperor, starring Andy Lau. 

Wei Shujun’s Only The River Flows was presented with Best Film in the Fei Mu Awards at this year’s Pingyao International Film Festival (PYIFF), while Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell, directed by Vietnam’s Pham Thien An, won Best Film in the festival’s Roberto Rossellini Awards.

MrBeast dropped a new YouTube video on Saturday (October 14) and it, of course, already has millions and millions of views!

The Wrestler, directed by Bangladeshi-Canadian filmmaker Iqbal H. Chowdhury, and September 1923, from Japan’s Tatsuya Mori, picked up the New Currents Awards as Busan International Film Festival wrapped a busy 28th edition on October 13. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Iqbal H. Choudhury’s “The Wrestler” and Mori Tatsutya’s “September 1923” were announced joint winners of the New Currents competition at the Busan International Film Festival. “The Wrester” “was like a single round match, magically depicting an exciting narrative,” the jury said.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Solids by the Seashore,” “The Berefts” and “House of the Seasons” were all multiple winners of the Vision Awards at the Busan International Film Festival on Thursday evening. Another winner was “Yellow Door: ’90s Lo-fi Film Club,” a documentary celebrating Korea’s early cinephiles, who include “Parasite” director Bong Joon-ho. The Vision Awards precede the main New Currents Competition and the Jiseok Competition prizes which will be presented on Saturday at the festival’s closing ceremony.FIPRESCI Award“That Summer’s Lie” Dir. Sohn Hyun-lok.

Naman Ramachandran Devashish Makhija’s survival thriller “Joram,” which is playing at the Busan International Film Festival, will be released theatrically worldwide by Zee Studios in December. The film, which premiered at Rotterdam earlier this year, is in Busan’s A Window on Asian Cinema strand. Eminent actor Manoj Bajpayee, who previously starred in Makhija’s 2016 short “Taandav” and played the title role in “Bhonsle,” plays Dasru, a tribal migrant worker in Mumbai whose past catches up with him and he must flee with his infant daughter Joram.

Cailee Spaeny dazzles while promoting her new film Priscilla at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival on Monday (October 9).

Naman Ramachandran After a three-year hiatus, the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival is returning with a larger lineup and an expanded focus on South Asian cinema. The festival will feature 250 films including 40 world premieres, 45 Asia premieres and 70 South Asia Premieres.

Dear Jassi arrives with echoes of Madonna’s 1989 hit “Dear Jessie” and its sugary promise of pink elephants and lemonade, but none of that turns out to be forthcoming in Tarsem Singh Dhandwar’s beautiful and brutal sixth feature. Instead, we have perhaps the most disturbing bait-and-switch since George Sluizer’s original iteration of The Vanishing, a Punjabi Juliet-meets-Romeo story that’s much harsher that any so-far-filmed version of West Side Story and a whole lot funnier. This dissonance takes a while to reveal itself, but when it does, the shock is visceral. The fact that almost everything is true is the killer blow, and the shockwave of that reverberates through the poignant final credits, a static shot that forces the audience, or maybe just simply dares them, to think about what they’ve just seen.  

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief EST N8, a recently-established finance, production and rights sales company, has added a Hong Kong remake of classic film “Tape” and the LGBT comedy-drama “ASOG” to its bulging sales slate at the AFCM market that accompanies the Busan Intenational Film Festival. “Tape” tells the story of three best friends who, following an event at a graduation party that transforms their lives, reunite 15 years later where a case of blackmail forces them to confront a terrible secret from their past. The original film starred Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Robert Sean Leonard and played at the Sundance, Toronto and Rotterdam festivals.In the Cantonese-language remake directed by Bizhan Tong, Selena Lee, Kenny Kwan, and Adam Pak play the contemporary characters while Mason Fung, Summer Chan, and Angus Yeung portray the characters’ younger versions. The script is written by Stephen Belber, Tong, Lee and Bonnie Lo, and is an adaptation of Belber’s own scripts from both the original film and stage play. The writers and director have significantly modernized the script to reflect advances in technology. Producers on the film include Tong, Lee and Belber.

China’s Pingyao International Film Festival has announced the line-up for its seventh edition (October 11-18), which will open with Wei Shujun’s Only The River Flows and close with the world premiere of Fei Yu’s Football On The Roof. 

Naman Ramachandran India’s Crawling Angel Films and Singapore’s Akanga Film Asia are teaming on Busan Asian Film School (AFiS) alumnus Aakash Chhabra’s feature directorial debut “I′ll Smile in September.” The film is selected at the Busan International Film Festival‘s Asian Project Market. Akanga’s credits include Cannes winner “Tiger Stripes,” Locarno winner “A Land Imagined” and its “Oasis of Now” is in competition in the festival’s New Currents strand.

Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla Presley biopic Priscilla is the centerpiece premiere at the New York Film Festival this evening, but the filmmaker had to miss the movie’s presser today at short notice, sending a note that she is “with her mother.” 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The growing media and entertainment connections between Korean Americans and those Koreans living in Korea may be changing both communities, a public discussion at the Busan International Film Festival on Friday heard. “Being in a room full of fans, feels like they accepted me as a member of the family. It feels like, culturally, Korea [may be in] a moment of transition,” said John Cho. He was joined in the debate by actor-director Justin Chon (“Gook”), director Lee Isaac Chung (“Minari”) and actor Steven Yeun, who are all either first or second generation immigrants to the U.S. They were careful not to speak about their current movies or projects out of respect for SAG strike protocols, but the avoidance of promotional niceties permitted a wider-ranging and more philosophical discussion. It touched on issues of identity, generational change and the development of the post-pandemic, streaming-era global village. “The reception I’ve had [in Busan] feels connective, not foreign, like living in a global reality,” said Yeun.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival is back after a one-year hiatus with a rich mix of Arabic and international titles launching into the Middle East and plenty of promising projects from Arab countries set to be unveiled to prospective partners at its CineGouna industry side. The event launched in 2017 by Egyptian telecom billionaire Naguib Sawiris – whose brother Samih built the El Gouna resort in a swathe of desert near the tourist town of Hurghada 250 miles south of Cairo – was put on pause in 2022 ostensibly due to the country’s economic crisis following five editions during which fest co-founder Amr Mansi and chief Intishal Al Timimi had managed to rapidly put El Gouna on the international festival map while also making it a favourite with the local crowd.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean sales agency, Finecut has picked up international sales rights to dance drama film “Victory,” which it will launch during the Asian Contents & Film Market that sits alongside the Busan Film Festival. The film, currently in post-production, is an upcoming title by Park Beom-su, a director known for a promising debut film “Red Carpet” in 2014. The story of “Victory” is centered around a high-school dance duo and an underdog school soccer team on a remote island. Two girls initially create a cheerleading club to pursue their love for dance, but they soon find themselves passionately cheering for the soccer team, eventually becoming a source of support for the entire island. The film stars Lee Hye-ri, a member of K-pop girl group Girl’s Day, who has become a popular actor with roles in “Monstrum” and TV’s “Reply 1998,” and Park Se-wan (“Life Is Beautiful,” “6/45,” “Collectors”) as the two protagonists.

Naman Ramachandran A total of 39 European companies, surpassing 2022, will promote and sell films from the continent at Busan International Film Festival‘s accompanying Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM). Of these, 32 will be onsite while seven more will participate online.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “I hope we can communicate and reconcile again,” said Busan Mayor Park Heong-joon on the opening night of the South Korean city’s film festival. With so much of the dialogue in opening drama “Because I Hate Korea” discussing Korean societal rigidities, group loyalties, long working hours and poor pay (which cause the protagonist to emigrate to laid-back New Zealand), it is easy to forget that many of these characteristics are what may have saved this year’s Busan International FIlm Festival from going off the rails.

Sharareh Drury Miami Dade College’s Miami Film Festival GEMS has announced the full lineup for its 2023 festival, which will run from Nov. 2-5. The 10th edition of the fest will feature 26 films from 14 countries, all taking place at MDC’s Koubek Center and Silverspot Cinema.