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The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BiFan) pulled out all the stops for its 20th anniversary edition last month, which featured by far its largest program to date, as well as several new elements, including a significantly expanded industry program.

 

From July 21st to the 31st this summer, BiFan screened a record 320 films from 49 countries, which included 52 world premieres. While figures have yet to be announced, new festival director CHOI Yong-bae has mentioned that audiences saw a significant uptick this year, with the festival expecting an increase in the region of 50%.

 

 

Though a large focus of the festival was on growing Asian markets, as well as the standard crop of global fare curated by the festival’s programming team, the top film this year at BiFan was a local one. NA Hong-jin’s THE WAILING, already a huge hit in Korea, when it amassed close to seven million admissions in late spring, as well as a critical favourite after its bow at the Cannes Film Festival, picked up both the Best of Bucheon Prize and the NH Audience Award.

 

The Bucheon Choice jury, which featured actress and professor CHANG Mi-hee, Christian Jeune of the Cannes Film Festival, actor JUNG Jin-young, producer Garrick Dion and filmmaker Khavn De La Cruz, remarked that THE WAILING was “a masterful, complex film that builds to a shattering climax and which favorably echoes such genre-transcending classics as The Exorcist and Seven. Like Friedkin and Fincher, director NA Hong-jin has crafted a hugely entertaining cinematic experience that resonates with enough subtleties and layers to inspire repeat viewings.”

 

NA was also featured in the festival’s ’20 Years 20 Favourites’ section, a new program that comprised popular BiFan titles over the years as voted on in an online poll. The lineup featured his 2008 breakout thriller The Chaser as well as other Korea favourites such as Save the Green Planet (2003) and Bedevilled (2010), and international titles including Memento (2000), Amelie (2001) and Let the Right One In (2008).

 

Other Best of Bucheon winners this year included Babak ANVARI’s Iranian horror film Under the Shadow, which received the Jury’s Choice Award, while Best Actress was bestowed upon Karin Viard of 21 Nights with Pattie and Best Actor was picked up by Deepak SAMPAT of Autohead.

 

In the new Korean Fantastic Features section, the big winner was KIM Sang-chan’s Karaoke Crazies, which took home the LG HiEntech Best Korean Fantastic Film Award and the Best Actress prize for the film’s star BAE So-eun. KIM’s film debuted earlier this year at the SXSW Film Festival. Elsewhere in the category, Best Actor went to Grand Father’s PARK Keun-hyong and the Audience Award was won by Phantom Detective, while a special mention was given to LEE Sang-ho’s documentary Who Killed Kim Kwang-seok? for best film and Phantom Detective’s KIM Ha-na earned a special mention for the Best Actress.

 

Best Short Film prize went to Simon Cartwright’s Manoman while The Bathtub by Tim Ellrich won both the Jury’s Choice and Audience Award for Short Film. In the Korea Fantastic: Shorts section, How to pick a lock by KIM Kwang-bin took the top prize. The Korean Fantastic Audience Award went to LEE Won-geun’s Cliché Resistance. Among the rest of the festival, the European Fantastic Film Festival Federation (EFFFF) Asian Award went to Anurag KASHYAP’s Psycho Raman, the NETPAC Award was taken by The Forest by Paul SPURRIER, the Save Energy, Save Earth Film Award went to Captain Fantastic by Matt Ross and the inaugural BIFAN Children’s Jury Award went to Laha MEBOW’s Hang in there, Kids!.

 

 

Away from the movie theatres, BiFan this year wrapped its first edition of the BiFan Industry Gathering (B.I.G), which featured several components, including the 9th edition of the Network of Asian Fantastic Films (NAFF). According to CHOI, “One of the roles of film festivals is to introduce films to audiences and hopefully even to distributors. Another role is to facilitate networking between film professionals and provide a ground for discussion on co-productions, remakes and imports/exports. The third function is to provide an environment for industry experts to come and talk about the future of the industry.” With this in mind, BiFan decided to significantly expand their industry activities this year.

 

Welcoming 24 projects this year, across the It Project, Malaysia Country Spotlight and Nordic Genre Invasion, NAFF held a record number of meetings (528) between hopeful filmmakers and potential investors, festival representatives and international sales companies. The top prize winner this year was Alejandro Suarez Lozano’s HK-set monster feature Mogwai, which earned the KRW 15 million (USD 13,500) top prize, as well as the Aurora Media Holdings USD 5,000 cash prize.

 

Beyond NAFF, B.I.G unleashed a wealth of new programs, including ‘Korea Now’, which staged a number of discussions pertaining to the Korean film industry. These included an SF Fantastic Forum, which BiFan patterned with the Producers Guild of Korea (PGK) to put on. According to CHOI, “I found out that they were trying to develop the sci-fi genre in Korea a few years ago but then they stopped, so I decided to resuscitate that for this year and bring in some foreign guest speakers to participate in a forum to discuss how we can develop sci-fi content here in Korea.” There was also a forum on Korea-China co-productions, which included a case study on the film Bounty Hunters, starring LEE Min-ho, and an event with the Federation of Korea Movie Workers’ Union which explored labor issues faced by local productions.

 

Expanding their focus to all Asian markets, B.I.G created a ‘Made in Asia’ program. This included both a section of films in the BiFan lineup, comprised of the three top-grossing films of last year from ten Asian nations, and a series of discussions with filmmakers involved with several of those titles.

 

The final component of the inaugural B.I.G was the ‘New Media’ showcase, which sought to explore new technologies available to filmmakers. This year the program focused on CGV’s ScreenX exhibition technology and the recent boom in Virtual Reality technology. A VR dome was set up outside Bucheon City Hall and festival attendees were invited to experience VR technology through a FX Gear’s NOON goggle headset. A panel talk entitled ‘VR Storytelling: Hope or Hype’ was also staged during the event.