Festival Screens 111 Films from 37 Countries over 8 Days
The closing ceremony included an awards presentation ceremony where prizes were awarded for the Asian Short Film & Video Competition, Pitch & Catch, a production support program designed to discover female filmmaking talents, and teen competition I-Teens, were awarded.
Burmese filmmaker Seng Mai Kinraw's experimental documentary
Last Kiss won the Sungjoo Grand Prize in the Asian short competition. In the same section, the Sungjoo First Prize went to "Vow" by Israeli director Netalie BRAUN and
Mirror in Mind by Korea's
KIM Seung-hee. The audience award and special mention went to Korean films;
BANG Woo-ri's
Mrs. Young and
JO Se-young's
Fair Trade, respectively.
The festival jury lauded the inventive structure of Last Kiss is particularly impressive, "as director Seng Mai Kinraw captures the feeling of the woman’s lyrical statements through documentary images."
KIM Bo-ra's House of Hummingbird, a coming-of-age-drama about a fourteen-year-old girl searching for love won the Megabox Award and 13 million KRW in the feature film category of Pitch & Catch. The audience award landed in the hands of JEONG Hee-jae for A Haunting Hitchhike. Host Nation by LEE Ko-woon took home two trophies in the documentary category; the Okrang Cultural Prize and the audience award. The project was also awarded production aid of 15 million KRW.
I-TEENS, the teen competition which originally started as a part of the Asian Short Film & Video Competition, was hosted separately this year. The award went to high school student filmmaker
Park Sang-ah's
First Step.
The festival showed a total of 111 films from 37 countries during the eight-day run.