The 19th edition of the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) came to a close after ten jam-packed days on Saturday, October 11th. Over 226,000 seats were filled for the 312 films that spanned the program and the combined number of accredited guests and press topped 10,000.

 

During a press conference held on Saturday morning to announce this year’s award winners, the Korean film End of Winter by KIM Dae-hwan and 13 from Iran’s Hooman SEYEDI picked up the festival’s signature New Currents Awards. The prizes were given by this year’s jury head Asghar FARHADI during the closing ceremony which preceded the closing film screening of LEE Po-cheung's Hong Kong thriller Gangster Pay Day.

 

Replacing the DGK acting prizes that are normally awarded during the Vision Awards ceremony were the new Actor and Actress of the Year awards. Presented by stars KIM Hee-ae and YOO Ji-tae and chosen among performance in the Korean Cinema Today: Vision lineup, these went to Set Me Free’s CHOI WOO-sik and Wild Flowers’ CHO Soo-hyang.

 

Also announced were the BIFF MECENAT Awards for Best Documentary, which went to the Cambodian The Storm Makers by Guillaume SUON and Collapse by Korean filmmaker LEE Won-woo, the Sonje Awards for Best Short which were awarded to Stairway, by Taiwan’s Matt WU and Korea’s The Night by CHOI Ki-yun, the KNN Audience Award which was won by Lebanese film Ghadi, from director Amin DORA, and finally, the Busan Bank Award, another audience prize that this year was bestowed upon The Boss, Anatomy of a Crime, by Argentine filmmaker Sebastian Schindel.

 

The previous evening, the Vision Awards were held in the Grand Hotel’s Emerald Room in Haeundae. The Korean Academy of Film Arts’ feature film Socialphobia earned its director HONG Seok-jae a pair of prizes (NETPAC and Director’s Guild of Korea Awards), while JANG Kun-jae’s A Midsummer’s Fantasia also won a DGK Award. The full list of Vision Awards winners was as follows:

Daemyung Culture Wave Award
The Liar by KIM Dong-myung
 
FIPRESCI (Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique) Award
What’s the Time in Your World? by Safi YAZDANIAN
 
NETPAC (Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema) Award
Socialphobia by HONG Seok-jae
 
Citizen Critics’ Award
Set Me Free by KIM Tae-yong
 
Busan Cinephile Award
The Look of Silence by Joshua OPPENHEIMER
 
CGV Movie Collage Award
A Matter of Interpretation by LEE Kwang-kuk
 
DGK (Directors Guild of Korea) Award
A Midsummer’s Fantasia by JANG Kun-jae
Socialphobia by HONG Seok-jae