South Korea’s largest film festival held its closing ceremony on Saturday with “Mountain Cry” by Larry Yang after a successful presentation of films from all over the world, and particularly Asia.
More than 227,000 visitors came to celebrate the Busan International Film Festival’s 20th anniversary and watched 302 movies from 75 countries.
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The BIFF closing ceremoy takes place at the Busan Cinema Center (Yonhap) |
The festival also drew hordes of the world’s most recognized stars in the film industry. French actress Sophie Marceau, American actor Harvey Keitel and British actress Tilda Swinton were present in Busan as well as Berlin-born Nastassja Kinski, who served as a member of the jury for the New Currents Award and left her handprints in Busan. Keitel and Hong Kong director Johnnie To were also honored with hand printing ceremonies.
From Asia, Busan was graced by Chinese actress Tang Wei, Taiwanese actors Chen Bolin and Yang Kuei-mei, and native Korean stars Jun Ji-hyun, Yoo Ah-in and Lee Jung-jae.
On Friday, Busan also received the French Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin, who visited Korea ahead of French President Francois Hollande’s trip here next month. After meeting with the executive directors of the Busan International Film Festival, Pellerin pledged at a press conference to work toward facilitating more coproduction films between the two countries, according to news reports.
The 20th Busan Film Festival had been organized with a substantially slashed budget this year, with allegations that the funding cuts were a form of retribution for the festival’s screening of a documentary last year about the politically sensitive Sewol ferry tragedy in 2014.
Major winners at the festival included Iranian director Hadi Mohaghegh’s “Immortal” and Kazakh director Yerlan Nurmukhambetov’s “Walnut Tree” for the New Currents Award, Kang Seok-pil’s “Boys Run” and Chinese director Ye Yun’s “Look Love” for the documentary BIFF Mecenat Award, and Lee Ju-won from “Alone” and Jang Sun from “Communication & Lies” for Actor and Actress of the Year, respectively.
The 20th Busan International Film Festival ran from Oct. 1-10, along with the Asian Film Market, the Asia Project Market, Asian Film Academy, Asian Cinema Fund and the BIFF Conference & Forum.
By Won Ho-jung and news reports (
hjwon@heraldcorp.com)
