Star of Bollywood film Zubaan, Sarah-Jane Dias on the red carpet at last year’s Busan Film Festival. PHOTO: FILE
This year’s event will screen 300 films from nearly 70 countries, including 66 features that will be receiving world premieres. The World Cinema section will include a number of top award winners from the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, including Ken Loach’s Palme D’Or recipient I, Daniel Blake and It’s Only the End of the World, which won the Grand Prix for director Xavier Dolan. The main focus will, as usual, be on Asian films with the Korean drama A Quiet Dream opening the festival and The Dark Wind by Iraqi film-maker Hussein Hassan bringing down the curtain.
The prestigious festival has been embroiled in a bitter dispute with the municipal government since the 2014 screening of a controversial documentary about the Sewol ferry disaster. Diving Bell criticised the government’s handling of the sinking that killed more than 300 people, mostly schoolchildren. The screening went ahead, despite fierce opposition of the Busan mayor and then chairman of the festival organising committee, Suh Byung-Soo.
Subsequent flurry of official probes targeting committee members and an unprecedented cut in state funding last year were seen as exacting political revenge and an assault on the festival’s creative independence. Four major South Korean filmmaker groups, including the Producers’ Guild of Korea and the Directors’ Guild of Korea (DGK), have said they will boycott BIFF, which runs from October 6 till October 15. The groups have hundreds of members, including the Cannes award-winning film director Park Chan-Wook and Bong Joon-Ho, who helmed the 2013 dystopian Hollywood sci-fi movie Snowpiercer.
There is particular anger over the treatment of former BIFF director Lee Yong-Kwan, who was forced to step down last year on embezzlement charges. Lee was instrumental in getting Diving Bell screened and supporters say the case against him is politically motivated. A Busan court is set to hand down a verdict in late October, with prosecutors seeking a one-year jail term.
In a bid to smooth things over, the Busan city government – a major BIFF sponsor – appointed the well-respected former founding director of the festival Kim Dong-Ho as the new chairman in June, replacing Mayor Suh. And a month later, the municipal authorities adopted new rules aimed at ensuring the committee’s independence.
While some responded by withdrawing boycott threats, the four prominent filmmaker groups refused to budge, saying the regulatory changes did not go far enough. “We think the new rules are a compromised version which did not reflect many of the demands from our members and will hardly be enough to ensure artistic freedom of the festival,” a spokeswoman of the DGK said. “The four groups will boycott the event as planned.”
Several moviemakers reportedly went so far as to reject the festival’s requests to screen their movies. The zombie blockbuster Train to Busan – a huge domestic and regional hit – will be absent from the Korean Cinema Today section, after its production company rejected a screening request.
BIFF programmer Nam Dong-Chul admitted that this year’s event had faced “many difficulties,” including a funding shortage but the festival was back on track. The appointment of Kim Dong-Ho as chairman had “helped convince those in the international film festival circuit that we were at least on the path to revival,” said Nam, who also appealed for a strong audience turnout. “We will be able to safeguard the status of the BIFF only if more movie fans come to our festival and support us,” he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 6th, 2016.
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