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Grand Prizes for MADONNA, STEEL FLOWER in Florence
16th Florence Korea Film Fest Winds to a Close
The Florence Korea Film Fest unspooled its 16th edition earlier this month in Italy, screening 29 features and 8 shorts over March 11th to 18th. The Best Film prizes in the Horizons and Independent section were won by SHIN Su-won’s Madonna and PARK Suk-young’s Steel Flower, respectively. Madonna also clinched the Audience Award, while a second place Audience Award went to HONG Won-chan’s Office and the Independent jury reserved a special mention for HONG Sang-soo’s Right Now, Wrong Then.
This year’s festivities were bookended by OH Seung-uk’s romantic thriller The Shameless, with JEON Do-yeon and KIM Nam-gil, and LEE Joon-ik’s period drama The Throne, starring SONG Kang-ho and YOO Ah-in.
Madonna, SHIN’s third feature film following Passerby #3 (2010) and PLUTO (2013), debuted in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival last year and has gone on to screen at numerous events, inducing the Busan, Fribourg and BFI London Film Festivals, winning the Golden Orchid Award for Best Narrative at the Hawaii International Film Festival along the way. The film stars SEO Young-hee (Bedevilled, 2010) as a nurse in a private hospital trying to discover the identity of a Jane Doe played by newcomer KWON So-hyun.
Steel Flower, the follow-up to PARK’s debut Wild Flowers, premiered at the Busan International Film Festival last October, and was awarded a Jury Prize at the Marrakech International Film Festival in December. JEONG Ha-dam, also in Wild Flowers, leads the film as a vagabond teenager who tries to find work and place to live in Busan.
