Dominican American family drama 'Mad Bills to Pay' claims top prize, as 'Winter Light' wins Korean competition

<Award winners and festival representatives gather on stage during the 26th Jeonju International Film Festival awards ceremony at Jeonbuk National University Samsung Cultural Center, in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province, Tuesday. (Jeonju IFF)>

Director Joel Alfonso Vargas' "Mad Bills to Pay" took home the grand prize in the international competition at the 26th Jeonju International Film Festival, while Cho Hyun-suh's "Winter Light" received the same prize for the Korean competition on Tuesday, at an awards ceremony held at Jeonbuk National University's Samsung Cultural Center in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province.

Winners across the festival's international, Korean and short film competitions were crowned at the awards ceremony, with 50 films having screened in competition.

"Mad Bills to Pay," a family drama, offers an intimate portrait of working-class Dominican American life in the Bronx, New York, through a series of fly-on-the-wall observations.

Vargas, himself a Bronx native, could not contain his excitement during his acceptance speech: "I feel like I'm walking on the moon right now. I've never seen audiences like at Jeonju anywhere else — the way they connect with films is truly something special."

 <"Mad Bills to Pay" (Jeonju IFF)>

Chen Deming's "Always" earned the NH Nonghyup-sponsored best picture prize, while Spanish-Portuguese documentary "Resistance Reels" by Alejandro Alvarado Jodar and Concha Barquero Artes received the special jury prize.

The Korean competition saw Cho Hyun-suh's "Winter Light" win the top prize. Cho's feature debut follows a high school student struggling with money problems while caring for his sister with a hearing disability.

Cho thanked lead actor Seong Yu-bin "for honestly responding to my requests for restraint" and credited her production team for sticking with her vision.

Park Joon-ho's "3670," a story about a gay North Korean defector, emerged as the ceremony's big winner with four awards: the distribution support prize, CGV Award, Watcha's Award and best actor prize for Kim Hyeon-mok. The sweep highlighted the festival's ongoing recognition of LGBTQ+ narratives, which festival programmers noted as a key trend in this year's Korean submissions.

 <"3670" (Jeonju IFF)>

The newly established Nongshim Shinramyun Award for a director in the Korean competition who demonstrated exceptional promise went to Divine Sung for "Summer's Camera." "I feel like I'm contributing, however slightly, to creating a safer world for queer people," Sung said. "I'll take this as encouragement to keep making films."

In the Korean competition for short films, which received a record 1,510 submissions, Hwang Hyeon-jee's "Mistletoe" won the grand prize. Other special awards included the NETPAC Award for Tsuta Tetsuichiro's "Black Ox" and the documentary award for Kim Il-rhan's "Edhi Alice: Reverse."

The 10-day festival, which opened April 30th with Romanian director Radu Jude's smartphone-shot "Kontinental '25," concludes Friday with Kim Ok-young's documentary "In the Land of Machines," which follows Nepali migrant workers in South Korea.

By Moon Ki-hoon

The Korean Herald (Click)