BUSAN, South Korea – South Korean actress Park Eun-bin opened this year’s Busan International Film Festival (Biff) on Wednesday, while Hong Kong star Chow Yun Fat was named Asian Filmmaker of the Year.
Park, 31, the breakout star of hit drama Extraordinary Attorney Woo (2022), was the festival’s first solo host for the opening ceremony.
Actor Lee Je-hoon, who was scheduled to co-host, had to undergo emergency surgery for inflammation of the large intestine.
Biff, Asia’s largest film festival, will showcase 269 films from 69 territories on 25 screens over 10 days. The related Asian content and film market will be held from Saturday to next Tuesday.
The 28th edition of the festival opened with South Korean director Jang Kun-jae’s Because I Hate Korea, starring Go Ah-sung and Joo Jong-hyuk, while Chinese director Ning Hao’s The Movie Emperor, starring Andy Lau, will close the festival on Oct 13.
Chow, 68, was announced as this year’s recipient for the Asian Filmmaker of the Year award. The Hong Kong actor’s films, including One More Chance (2023), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and A Better Tomorrow (1986), will be screened during the festival.
“It’s been exactly 50 years since I started my career as an actor,” he said in Cantonese after accepting the award on stage. “Fifty years may seem like a long road I have walked, but at the same time, it just feels like yesterday.”
He thanked Hong Kong’s TVB station for giving him his start, the territory’s film industry for helping him go far and his wife Jasmine Tan for supporting him.
He took a wefie with the audience and said, “Thank you, I love you”, in Korean.
South Korean actor Song Kang-ho, 56, this year’s Biff host, greeted guests such as French director Luc Besson, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, Chinese actress Fan Bingbing and South Korean actress Youn Yuh-jung during the festival.
Song said in an interview with The Korea Herald that he happily accepted the suggestion to become the Biff host because he wanted to support the festival. He recently starred in director Kim Jee-woon’s black comedy Cobweb.
For the first time, Biff is showcasing a Korean-American section, Korean Diaspora, introducing works by Korean-American film-makers like Lee Isaac Chung of the Oscar-winning Minari (2020).
Some of the high-profile works of global auteurs and actors such as Kore-eda’s Monster and French actress Lea Seydoux’s The Beast will be showcased, while highly anticipated South Korean director Baik Jong-yul’s Believer 2 and director Lee Chung-hyun’s Ballerina will get world premieres at Busan.
A documentary titled Dear Jinri, which includes the late K-pop singer Sulli’s final interview, will also make its premiere. THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK
