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Golden Bear Winner to Open 18th Jeonju Film Festival
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).
