Serge Toubiana, the President of Unifrance, Appointed as the Jury President for the New Currents

The 27th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), which will be held for 10 days from October 5 (Wed), has announced this year’s jury members for the New Currents, the Asian Film Competition section, as well as the Kim Jiseok Award.

The New Currents Awards is BIFF’s major competition section that introduces the first or the second feature films of emerging directors, who will lead the future of Asian cinema. The New Currents juries this year, led by the president of Unifrance, Serge Toubiana, consist of a total of 5 members, including Alain Guiraudie (Director, France), Kamila Andini (Director, Indonesia), Kase Ryo (Actor, Japan), and Lee Eugene (Producer, Korea).

Serge Toubiana, president of Unifrance, held the position of editor-in-chief at the prestigious French film publication ‘Cahiers du Cinéma’ for 26 years and published many books on films. He was the director of the film museum La Cinémathèque Française in Paris and served as a jury for Berlin International Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival several times.

Apart from Serge Toubiana, other members of the jury include Alain Guiraudie, the winner of the Un Certain Regard Prize and Queer Palm at the 66th Cannes Film Festival for Stranger by the Lake (2013), and Kamila Andini, an Indonesian female director of Yuni (2021), an official selection for A Window on Asian Cinema at the 26th Busan International Film Festival and the winner of the Platform Prize at the 46th Toronto International Film Festival. Kase Ryo, a Japanese actor who made his first international appearance in a film directed by Clint Eastwood, Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), and continued to appear in several high-profile international films, including Hong Sangsoo’s Hill of Freedom (2014) and Martin Scorsese’s Silence (2017), was also appointed as a jury member along with Lee Eugene, president of ZIP CINEMA and film producer, the winner of the 8th Women in Film Korea Festival and who has actively produced Korean commercial films on various subjects, such as Jeon Woochi: The Taoist Wizard (2009), The Priests (2015), and most recently, Broker (2022).

For the Kim Jiseok Award, which was established in 2017 to commemorate the spirit of the late BIFF program director, Kim Jiseok, Jean-Michel Frodon (Film critic, France), Ogigami Naoko (Director, Japan), and Kim Heejung (Director, Korea) have been appointed as the jury members. 

Jean-Michel Frodon previously worked for a prestigious French daily ‘Le Monde’ as a film journalist for 13 years and as an editorial director at an internationally acclaimed film journal Cahiers du Cinéma. Director Ogigami Naoko has a lot of Korean fans through his films, such as Yoshino’s Barber Shop (2004), Kamome Diner (2006), and Glasses (2007). Director Kim Heejung is also taking the role of a jury member. After winning the APM KOCCA Award for A French Woman (2020) at the 21st Busan International Film Festival, she continues to maintain a close relationship with BIFF through her latest film, Where Would You Like to Go? (2021), an official Asian Project Market (APM) selection at the 26th Busan International Film Festival.