SPROUT Awarded Crystal Bear
The 64th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival wound to a close last night (February 16th) following its 10-day run. Though no Korean film featured in the festival’s main competition, of the seven Korean works peppered throughout the festival’s extensive program, three will bring home awards from Germany this week. The Korean documentaries
A Dream of Iron and
Non Fiction Diary shared the NETPAC Prize for Best Asian Film while
Sprout was awarded the Crystal Bear for Best Short in the Generation Kplus section.
Kelvin Kyung Kun PARK’s A Dream of Iron had its world premiere in Berlinale’s Forum section this year. The documentary, an artful look into the POSTCO steelmaking factory in Southern Korea, follows PARK’s Cheonggyecheon Medley: A Dream of Iron (2010), which also screened in Berlin in 2011. Also part of the Forum program, JUNG Yoon-suk’s debut film Non Fiction Diary premiered at the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) last October, where it won the Mecenat award for Best Documentary. JUNG’s film explores the political and social atmosphere of South Korea in the early 1990s by examining some of the period’s darkest hours.
YOON Ga-eun’s Sprout also debuted at BIFF, where it received a special mention for the Sonje Award. YOON is a graduate student from the Korea National University of Arts who previously won the Grand Prix at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in 2012 for her 2011 work Guest. KIM Jung-in’s short Cheong earned a special prize in the same section last year.
In addition to Cheong, SHIN Su-won’s Pluto also received a special mention in the Generation 14plus section of last year’s Berlinale.