The number of visitors to the 20th edition of Busan International Film Festival that closed on Oct 10th was 227,000. It is the all time record, although by a small difference, that surpasses the  previous record of 226,000 last year, and it also marks the 4th consecutive year to surpass 200,000 visitors to the festival.

 

For the last 20 years, the BIFF has matured as much as the Korean film industry has. Higher status, more screening rooms, and more films. Now let us look back on the 1st edition of the BIFF 20 years ago. The number of the visitors was 184,000. It is 40,000 less than that of this year, but the passion of film lovers in Korea for the first international film festival was much higher than common expectation.

 

In the following year the BIFF received 170,000 visitors which was 14,000 less than the year before, but at the third edition, the visitors sharply increased to 192,000. In 2001, when the screen rooms expanded to the Haeundae area from the Nampo-dong area, the number of visitors drastically decreased to 143,000 by 38,000 from the previous year of 181,000, but it soon recovered and had 167,000 visitors in 2002.

 

Later, the number of visitors largely kept increasing despite small changes here and there, reaching 221,000 in 2012, surpassing 200,000 for the first time. And for the following 4 years, the number never went down below 200,000.

 

It was in 2014 that the record in 2012 broke, with 226,000 visitors. It was as many as 5,000 more than the previous record, but it only took one year to break it yet again, reaching 227,000 this year. 20 years is the time it takes for a newborn to grow into an adult. The BIFF has matured splendidly for the last 20 years and is anticipating another great 20 years and beyond.