JIFF to Focus on Indie and Art Cinema
The
Jeonju International Film Festival recently held its press conference to announce the lineup of its 18th edition, which will take place from April 27th to May 6th. The arthouse and independent cinema focused festival will open this year with
On Body and Soul, this year’s Golden Bear winner from the Berlin International Film Festival.
On Body and Soul director Ildiko Enyedi will also be on hand to take part in a masterclass and to feature in this year’s international jury. Other jury members include International Film Festival of Marseille director Jean-Pierre Rehm, documentarian Dominique Cabrera, Korean filmmaker
PARK Jin-pyo and local star
HA Ji-won. Local filmmakers
SONG Hae-sung and
KIM Jong-kwan, as well as actress
JUNG Eun-chae, feature on other juries.
In a departure from the more global format of previous years’, all three of this year’s Jeonju Cinema Projects, independent feature films fully financed by the festival, are homegrown. They include
KIM Yang-hee’s
The Poet And The Boy, the Grand Prize winner from last year’s
Jeonju Project Market (JPM);
LEE Chang-jae’s documentary
Project N; and
The First Lap, the sophomore feature of
End of Winter (2016) director
KIM Dae-hwan.
Among the special programs on offer this year will be a focus on screenwriter
SONG Gil-han, responsible for many Korean classics from directors such as
IM Kwon-taek and
LEE Jang-ho. The program also features retrospectives on British director Michael Winterbottom, Soviet filmmaker Aleksay German and modern Italian cinema.
The festival will conclude with Survial Family, from Japanese filmmaker YAGUCHI Shinobu (Wood Job!, 2014).