The future of filmmaking is at stake at this year’s Busan International Film Festival (BIFF). The 31st edition of BIFF will showcase, for the first time, an extended focus on emerging technologies – including animation, artificial intelligence (AI), and microdramas – across different sections within the festival, which will run from October 6-15, 2026.

This year’s film program will spotlight independent animation. Programmer Kang Sowon highlighted that, compared to previous years, the programming team selected not one, but two Korean animated features – both of which are incidentally directorial debuts. This year’s Vision program will include CGI slice-of-life drama, Earbug (Kim Hyomi) and stop-motion funerary ritual, The Flower (Kim Si-jin). The Flower will be the second stop-motion animated feature ever to be made in South Korea in half a century, following Kim Kangmin’s Mother Land from 3 years earlier.

Hope (2026)

Korean animation is also centered across shorts programming. In Wide Angle - Korean Short Film Competition, three animated mixed media shorts will premiere: Yun Taerang’s hand-drawn satire TOE’S, Cho Haein’s children’s television show-themed, An Uninvited Neighbor, and Chang Hyungyun’s digital 2D/3D animated horror The Variety. CGI-heavy Hope (Na Hong-jin) will also play in the “Korean Cinema Today” section.

Furthermore, BIFF Festival Director Jung Hanseok announced that this year’s Special Program in Focus is dedicated to masterpieces in Japanese animation, spanning from 1958 to present, under the title, “Japanese Animation Special: Masterpieces of Madness, Exhilarating Prospects 12+1.” Southeast Asia and its diaspora is also notably present among the animated selections, including Ervin Han and Raúl García’s Annecy Cristal-awarded, Singaporean historic epic The Violinist; France-based Nguyen Phuong Mai’s In Waves; and Carlos Joseph Papa’s Filipino animated documentary, The 58th. A new program, titled Midnight Passion, will also showcase two animated features: Japanese cult classic Angel’s Egg (Oshii Mamoru, 1985) and campy queer comedy, Jim Queen (Marco Nguyen, Nicolas Athané, 2026).

The academic arm of BIFF, Jiseok Film Institute, will also discuss the role of Korean animation – as well as future-facing technologies, such as generative AI – at this year’s BIFF Forum 2026, which is themed, “Exploring the Possibilities of Contemporary Cinema.” The Forum will cover four major themes across eight sessions: Industry, AI & Creation, Institutions & Policy, and Region & Environment. In addition to covering the mid-budget film crisis, animation in the box office, and regional cinema governance, the tense relationship between AI, labor, and filmmaking will be discussed through the provocatively titled sessions, “The Future of AI Cinema: Can AI and Artists Coexist?” and “New Creativity in the AI Era: Asking for the Human Place.” BIFF Forum will take place in the first half of the festival, at the Busan Film & Audiovisual Industry Center from October 8-11.

The Outlaws (2017)

The following week, BIFF’s market arm, Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM), will follow up on generative AI-forward conversations through InnoAsia at BEXCO from October 10-13. Several work-in-progress previews of feature films, animations, and series made with generative AI will play in the InnoAsia WIP showcase, including one by director Kang Yunsung (The Outlaws). Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream) will also introduce his generative AI animation studio, Primordial Soup, a Google DeepMind collaboration that he first showcased at Cannes Next.

Markedly, start-ups – rather than big film studios – will also be showcased at InnoAsia. These start-ups cover AI use across different aspects of the filmmaking pipeline. Companies range from handling casting contracts (Lumicraft’s Castlink) to AI dubbing (Voithru Totus) to assessing audience response (InsightFlow). International participants, as well as alternative forms of cinematic media, will also take part – including France’s AtlasV, an XR (extended reality) company, and Taiwan’s imCore, a visual special effects (VFX) efficiency start-up. Global big tech companies will also make an appearance, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Kling AI, Google DeepMind, and Alibaba Group.

Finally, platform media will grace festival conversations as well. Microdramas – short form video content that first emerged in China in 2018, and has since become a multi-billion dollar industry across the Pacific – will be discussed at both BIFF Forum 2026 and ACFM. Executives from platforms such as MangoTV, FlickReels, and Vigloo are expected to be in attendance.

With at least eight percent of its film program dedicated to animation, a quarter of its academic sessions to generative AI, and over half of the market to start-ups, AI workflows, and microdramas, this year’s BIFF will explore the many technological forms cinema could take as we move away from traditional live-action cinema. As the festival heads into its next decade, where we end up pivoting to next remains to be seen.

Written by Grace Han
Edited by kofic