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Director Hong Sangsoo's feature film Walk Up has been invited to the official competition section of the San Sebastian International Film Festival, which marks its 70th anniversary this year. Director Hong Sangsoo's 28th feature film, Walk Up, will compete for the Golden Shell for the Best Film, which is the highest award at the festival, with more than 20 films invited to this year's competition, including Winter Boy, French Director Christophe Honoré's new film.

Held in San Sebastian, a resort city in northern Spain from September 16, 2022, the festival marks its 70th anniversary this year. The San Sebastian International Film Festival is the most important international film festival in Spanish, which boasts a long history and influence. Along with the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, the San Sebastian International Film Festival is one of the major films representing Europe. The San Sebastian International Film Festival has contributed greatly to promoting Director Hong Sangsoo's films in Spanish. 

Director Hong Sangsoo was invited to the festival's official competition for Yourself and Yours in 2016 and won Silver Shell, the Best Director Award. The director was also invited for The Day After in 2017 and The Woman Who Ran in 2020 to the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section. The Woman Who Ran won the Special Mention of the year. 

Director Hong Sangsoo’s ‘Poetic World’ Has Become More Minimal

Director Hong Sangsoo's new film Walk Up is expected to show his ‘poetic world’ that has become more minimal. The film is about a middle-aged film director visiting a building with his daughter, an aspiring interior designer. Walk Up follows the father and daughter talking with the designer of the building as they climb up the building one floor at a time from the basement to the top. The Korean title of the film is 'Taap', which can convey the double meanings of ‘Tower’ in Korean and ‘Top’ in English at the same time.

Filmed at a building in Nonhyeon-dong, Seoul, in the fall of 2021, the film features Director Hong’s long-time colleagues. From Kwon Haehyo, Lee Hyeyoung, Cho Yunhee, and Park Miso of The Novelist’s Film, Song Sunmi of The Woman Who Ran, to Shin Seokho of INTRODUCTION, the actors who appeared in the director’s previous films also star in the new film. Actor Kim Minhee took the position of the director-in-chief of the production department instead of appearing in the film. 

Broker, Director Kore-eda Hirokazu’s First Korean Film, Invited to the Perlak Section

Director Kore-eda Hirokazu's first Korean film, Broker, which presented Actor Song Kangho with the Best Actor award at the 75th Festival de Cannes, has been invited to the Perlak section of the film festival. Perlak is the section that screens the best feature film of the year among the films not released in Spain. After the Festival de Cannes, Broker has enjoyed heated responses from overseas film festivals. In addition to the 70th San Sebastian Film Festival, the film has been invited to and screened at many overseas film festivals, including the New Horizons Film Festival (7/21-7/31) and the Jerusalem Film Festival (7/21-7/31) held in July, the Melbourne International Film Festival (8/4-8/21) and the Korean Film Festival in Australia (8/18-8/21), etc.

In addition, Broker has continued its reputation as a Cannes-winning film by winning the ARRI Award, the Grand Prize, at the 39th Munich International Film Festival and being selected as the closing film of the 69th Sydney Film Festival. Director Kore-eda Hirokazu will visit the 70th San Sebastian Film Festival to meet the audience in person and have a heart-to-heart talk about the film in depth.

Moreover, the 27th Chunsa International Film Festival in Korea has selected Director Kore-eda as the winner of the Best International Director section that was newly established last year, drawing attention. The 27th Chunsa International Film Festival will be held on September 30. In addition, the film has been selected as the opening film at the 11th Wonju Women's Film Festival, which runs from September 16th to 18th, making us feel a huge interest in the film once again.

Director Lee Changdong’s HEARTBEAT Invited to the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Section

Director Lee Chang-dong's HEARTBEAT, who directed Poetry and Burning, was also invited to the festival. Heartbeat is Lee’s latest and first short film. A few years ago, WHO and BCAF (Beijing Contemporary Art Fund) asked world-famous directors to make short films about a certain topic. The boy in Heartbeat runs back home from school with fear and anxiety. With only one take following the boy, the film shows the reason why individuals and Korean society suffer.

Zabaltegi-Tabakalera is San Sebastian Festival’s all-encompassing competitive section, where there are neither rules nor limits as to style or runtime: short, medium-length, feature, fiction, non-fiction or animated films, series, audiovisual installations, future discoveries and contemporary classics as yet unseen in Spain. This is a section for films daring to try new angles and formats, a true open and high-risk zone.

All of the films in the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Section compete for the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Award coming with 20,000 euros shared between the director (6,000 euros) and distributor of the film in Spain (14,000 euros).

Director Jung Jihye’s Jeong-sun, Invited to the New Directors Section

Director Jung Jihye's Jeong-sun, which won the Grand Prize at the Jeonju International Film Festival this year, has been invited to San Sebastian’s New Directors section. The New Directors section is a competition section that selects the first or the second feature films of new directors. All of the films in this section compete for the Kutxabank-New Directors Award, coming with 50,000 euros distributed in equal parts between the director and the distributor of the film in Spain. 

Jeong-sun is a work based on the illegal leakage of videos between lovers. The victim of digital sex crimes in the film is Jeong-sun, a middle-aged female worker working at a food factory. She sees one of her co-workers, falls in love with him, and is in trouble one day when a private video taken by the man who she thinks is her lover spreads to the company. The film intentionally puts up the middle-aged woman as a victim of digital sex crimes because it wants to deliver the message that digital sex crimes do not occur only for certain age groups.

The 70th San Sebastian International Film Festival will be held from September 16 to 24, with the official invitations of Korean films that enjoy spotlights from the global film festivals.