Busan Film Festival Director Jung Hanseok Talks Oscars Pathway, New Competition Section & Korean Cinema Recovery

It’s been an encouraging year for South Korea’s Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), which has received recognition from the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF) and also been designated a pathway to an Oscars’ nomination.

FIAPF announced in March that BIFF has been added to its list of “A-list festivals” joining the ranks of festivals such as Berlin, Venice and Cannes. A few months later, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) announced that the top prize winners of six international festivals, including Busan, will automatically qualify for submission to the Best International Feature Film category of the Oscars. This places BIFF in a select gathering alongside Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Sundance and Toronto.

Jung Hanseok, who took up the post of BIFF festival director last year, says these developments are already “having a positive effect on both the number and quality of submissions to the festival. They give filmmakers a meaningful additional incentive to submit their work to BIFF.”

BIFF only introduced a fully-fledged competition section last year, handing out awards in six categories, including Best Film, which has become the pathway to the Oscars, along with Best Director, Special Jury Award, Best Actor, Best Actress and an Artistic Contribution Award.

Last year, Gloaming In Luomu, from Korean-Chinese filmmaker Zhang Lu, was awarded Best Film, with Taiwan’s Shu Qi taking Best Director for Girl. The festival also has a Vision Awards ceremony – recognising films across both the ‘Vision – Korea’ and ‘Vision – Asia’ sections – in which a wide range of independent juries hand out prizes.

“Compared with the competition sections of longer-established festivals, BIFF’s Competition is still very new,” Jung cautions. “So one of our early challenges was to communicate its value and build confidence in the section as quickly as possible. I think the FIAPF recognition and the new Academy pathway have helped accelerate that process.”

Jung cites China as one territory where filmmakers’ interest in BIFF has risen, due to the fact that filmmakers invited to A-list festivals are more likely to receive attention when applying for public support.

“We’ve seen similar changes in Japan, where key industry figures have been noticeably more proactive and receptive towards BIFF’s Competition than they were last year,” he says. “Some filmmakers may now be able to envision a longer-term path that begins with winning the Busan Award for Best Film and continues into an Oscar campaign.”

He adds that Korean filmmakers are also waking up to this possibility. Korea’s Oscars committee has already submitted Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love as its official entry, which is currently receiving an Oscars-qualifying run in Korean theatres before streaming on Netflix. In theory, a Best Film Award win from Busan could make a second Korean film eligible.

However, BIFF’s Competition section embraces the whole of Asia and this year’s line-up of 14 titles also spans films from China, Taiwan, Japan, Uzbekistan, Indonesia and Iran (see here for the full line-up), so the field is wide open. Chinese director Zhang Yimou is heading the seven person jury that will decide on the awards.

Jung says he didn’t really appreciate the impact of the new Competition section last year, until he was planning this year’s festival: “We’ve sensed a much more positive and receptive atmosphere around the Competition section than we did in its first year. For that reason, our main priority this year has been the stability and consolidation of the Competition,” he says.

“In the longer term, BIFF intends to remain grounded in an Asian perspective and in values that emerge from within Asia when operating the section. At the same time, we want to continue asking ourselves what exactly ‘Asian’ should mean in that context.”

When asked about the competition selection criteria, Jung says it’s “quite simply, the quality of each individual film”. He adds that the 14 selected titles, when look at together, “should form a compelling cinematic landscape that reveals something of contemporary Asian cinema as it exists today. One notable difference this year is that the quality is more consistent across the Competition, while the overall standard of the line-up has also risen.”

The festival opens tonight (Tuesday, October 6) with a screening of Kim Jong-kwan’s The Table: Day And Night, and with Kim Minha (Pachinko) hosting the opening ceremony. Other talent attending the festival includes Michelle Yeoh, who is being honored as Asian Filmmaker of the Year; Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui, who is receiving the Camellia Award; Maggie Gyllenhaal, presenting her short film Flesh Impact in Special Screenings; and French actress Isabelle Huppert, who will meet local audiences with her latest film, All About Corinne.

The stacked talent list also includes Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi, who has Midday Meal in competition and will be making his first visit to the festival; Japanese anime master Rintaro, who worked in the same era as the legendary manga artist Tezuka Osamu; and Alfonso Cuaron, in town for a special IMAX screening of Gravity and the Asian Premiere of Jonás Cuarón’s Campeón Gabacho.

In total, BIFF is screening 246 films – five more than last year and marking the festival’s largest lineup since 2019 – and is opening one day earlier than in previous years. Jung explains that BIFF has also increased the number of screenings from Thursday through Sunday, when attendance is at its highest. “These were all practical improvements intended to give audiences greater convenience and more opportunities to see films,” he says. “The response so far has been very positive. Even before on-site ticket sales begin, online bookings alone suggest that this year’s total attendance could surpass last year.”

In addition to the Competition and Vision selections, the festival’s major sections include Gala Presentation, which is showing six titles including Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Look Back and Yeon Sang-ho’s Paradise Lost; and Icons, which this year is showing 16 titles including Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All Of A Sudden, Pedro Almodovar’s Bitter Christmas, Christian Mungiu’s Fjord and Lav Diaz’s Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors.

On Screen is world premiering initial episodes from three highly anticipated series: Netflix’s The Blue Road and Dead-End Job and Disney’s The Remarried Empress. The Blue Road director Han Jun-hee will be on hand during Netflix’s Creative Asia day to present a masterclass entitled “Making Unexpected Stories Resonate”.

BIFF’s popular Open Cinema section, which offers free open-air screenings at its iconic Busan Cinema Center, is showing eight films including Look Back, Banjong Pisanthanakun’s Inherit, and Ervin Han and Raúl García’s Annecy award-winning animation The Violinist.

This year’s special programmes include ‘Those Beautiful Years, Ahn Sung-ki’, focusing on the late Korean actor, and a Japanese animation special: ‘Masterpieces of Madness, Exhilarating Prospects 12+1’. The annual ‘Carte Blanche’ programme invites prominent figures from the world of cinema to personally select films that have profound influenced them. This year’s guests include Korean filmmaker Kim Jee-woon, Chinese actress Fan Bingbing, and Korean cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo.

The Flash Forward section for non-Asian first and second-time filmmakers is screening eight titles include Stephanie Ahn’s Bedford Park and Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s La Bola Negra. Other major sections include A Window On Asian Cinema, Korean Cinema Today, World Cinema, Wide Angle, focusing on short films and documentaries, and Midnight Passion.

While BIFF prides itself on showcasing cinema from across the Asian continent, it’s also the case that many public audience members, not to mention press and industry, are attending the festival to catch up with the latest Korean cinema. In this respect, BIFF is also riding a positive trend as local cinema began to revive at the beginning of this year, following a long period of declining box office and audience apathy that held back post-pandemic recovery.

Starting from the Lunar New Year holiday in February, Korea has enjoyed a string of domestic hits including historical drama The Kings Warden, Yeon Sang-ho’s Colony, Na Hong-jin’s Hope, and horror film Salmokji: Whispering Water.

Also climbing up the 2026 Top Ten chart is Hur Jin-ho’s political thriller The Assassin(s), which premiered at Toronto International Film Festival and has so far grossed nearly $18M since its release over the recent Chuseok holiday. However, the film had to withdraw from its planned BIFF participation due to the huge row that erupted when right-wing critics accused the film of historical inaccuracy. The Directors Guild of Korea has recently come out in support of the film.

Controversy aside, however, Korean cinema currently has a lot to celebrate, and the recent success of The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day in this market have also brought relief to the territory’s beleaguered cinema operators. Jung welcomes this return of Korean audiences to physical theatres, although he cautions there’s still work to be done to return the local industry to full health.

“The fact that cinema attendance is increasing compared with last year suggests that there are encouraging signs of recovery,” he says. “In particular, several Korean films and major Hollywood releases have helped younger audiences – who make up an important part of Korea’s cinema-going public – become accustomed once again to the experience of going to a movie theatre to watch a film.

“At the same time, it remains very difficult for small and mid-budget films both to secure financing and to obtain theatrical releases,” he continues. “Government policy in this area is becoming more active, but we will need more time before we can judge its effects.”

Busan International Film Festival is taking place October 6-15 at Busan Cinema Centre and multiple venues across the city. The festival’s industry platform, Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM), kicks off on Saturday, October 10 and runs until Tuesday, October 13.