The Busan International Film Festival opens its 31st edition with a new claim on awards-season relevance: its top prize now opens a direct route to the Oscars.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has designated the Busan Award for Best Film as a qualifying prize for the best international feature category. The winner joins the ranks of top prize winners at Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Sundance and Toronto in earning automatic eligibility for submission, bypassing the longstanding route of selection by a national committee. The festival runs through Oct. 15.
The Academy’s move followed another milestone. In March, the international producers’ federation FIAPF added Busan to its list of top-tier festivals, alongside Berlin, Venice and Cannes. Festival director Jung Hanseok, who took the job last year, says the two honors are already lifting both the number and quality of submissions. He expects them to give filmmakers a longer horizon that begins with a Busan win and extends into an Oscar campaign.
Jung also tempers expectations. The festival’s competition section, launched only last year, remains young next to those of long-established rivals, he cautions. Confidence among leading Asian filmmakers has “built very quickly,” he told UPI, and he describes the lineup of 13 films as chosen on merit. Asked about selection criteria, he answers, “quite simply, the quality of each individual film.”
The prize carries particular stakes for South Korea. The country’s Oscars committee has already submitted Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love as its official entry, and the film is running in Korean theaters to meet qualifying rules before it streams on Netflix. A Busan Best Film win by a different Korean title could give the country a second contender, a prospect that would have seemed remote when local cinema was struggling through a prolonged slump. Jung sees signs of recovery in the domestic industry this year.
Beyond competition, the program leans on name directors. Gala presentations include Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Look Back and Yeon Sang-ho’s Paradise Lost. The Icons section features 16 titles, among them Christian Mungiu’s Fjord, Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden and Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love.
