KOREAN NET

By Lee Dasom

Photos and video = Busan International Film Festival

The 29th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), Asia's largest cinematic event, kicks off its 11-day run on Oct. 2 with the opening ceremony.

To start at 6 p.m. at the outdoor screen of Busan Cinema Theater in Busan's Haeundae-gu District, the event will be hosted by actors Park Boyoung and Ahn Jaehong. Livestreaming of the ceremony on Naver TV (tv.naver.com/biff23) starts at 6 p.m.

This year's gala features 224 films from 63 countries to be shown at 26 screens of five theaters: CGV Centum City, Lotte Cinema Centum City, Megabox Busan Theater and the theater of the Korean Film Council.

The opening movie is the Netflix historical epic "Uprising" by director Kim Sang-man and producer Park Chan-wook, who also helped write the screenplay. The film is the first from an over-the-top platform to open BIFF.

The guests this year are Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who is this year's BIFF's Asian Filmmaker of the Year and will screen works "Serpent's Path" and "Cloud," both of which came out this year; Miguel Gomes, who directed "Joyful Melancholy"; and Ann Hui, an icon among the new wave of Hong Kong directors.

Other sideline events include "open talks" with directors and cast members of invited films and "outdoor stage greetings."

The opening ceremony will announce the winners of Asian Filmmaker of the Year and the Korean Cinema Awards for those contributing to Asian cinema and the global spread of Korean movies. This year's BIFF will also launch the Documentary Audience Award to promote the documentary genre.

Also happening over the festival period is the 19th annual Asian Contents & Film Market, a venue for trading global cinematic and video content and intellectual property rights, from Oct. 5-8 at Exhibition Hall 2 of the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center, aka BEXCO.

BIFF will conclude on Oct. 11 with the closing work "Spirit World."

This is a scene from "Spirit World," the closing work of this year's Busan International Film Festival.

dlektha0319@korea.kr