Global News Journal

Pusan International Film Festival unveils line up

The Pusan International Film Festival opens its 14th edition with “Good Morning President”, a movie taking a warm-hearted look at the ruthless and cold-blooded world of South Korean politics.

The festival is Asia largest and runs from October 8-16 in the South Korean port city of Busan. Organisers on Tuesday unveiled the line-up for the festival where 355 films from 70 countries will be screened, including 98 that will be world premieres.

The festival has its red carpet where several of South Korea’s and Asia’s biggest stars parade before the cameras but it pales in comparison to the glamorous showings in Cannes or Venice. What the Pusan fest does best is celebrate and promote Asian films. It is also one of the biggest film markets in the region where producers from, say, Malaysia can pick up distribution deals in Japan.

Influential Bollywood director and producer Yash Chopra will be honoured as filmmaker of the year at the festival, which is considered one of the top cinema honours in Asia.

The festival will have a special programme celebrating Hong Kong’s Johnnie To, called “The Hood in the City”, while French director Jean-Jacques Beineix will heads the jury for the New Currents award that honours new Asian directors.

An Interview With South Korea’s Box Office Champ Director Bong Joon-ho

The South Korean director whose movie about a mutant river monster became the country’s biggest box office hit has a new film on what might be an even more terrifying subject — an maniacally obsessive mother.

Bong Joon-ho sat down last week for an interview with Reuters about his new movie called “Mother”that debuted last month at the Cannes International Film Festival and has quickly become one of South Korea’s biggest hits of the year.

The movie is about a mother who goes to extremes to protect her emotionally and mentally unstable son after he is charged with murder. It follows Bong’s movie “The Host,” which was the first South Korean film to make more than $100 million at the local box office.

The following are excerpts from the interview in Korean and translated by Kim Junghyun 

Reuters: How would you describe your movie “Mother”?

Bong: It is a movie that brings this issue of motherhood to the extremes. This movie is about a mother, but not just a mother. It’s a mother whose son is facing a murder charge. International audiences might find it easier to approach this movie at first as a thriller.

Blood-suckers and blood-thirsty revenge: an interview with South Korean director Park Chan-wook

South Korean director Park Chan-wook talked vampires and the movie industry at an interview with Reuters in Seoul this week as his movie “Thirst” prepares to enter the competition at the Cannes International Film Festival which opens today. Park’s movie “Oldboy” won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004 and this is his first film in competition since then.

“Thirst” stars Song Kang-ho and Kim Ok-vin  as a priest turned vampire and a femme fatale respectively.

Here is a transcript of the Reuters interview with Park,  translated from Korean.

 SPOILER ALERT: About halfway through this interview, Park speaks about the ending for “Thirst”

(Reuters pictures by Jo Yong-hak. Park Chan-wook at his office in Seoul and actress Kim Ok-vin)

Reuters: Your film “Oldboy” left such a deep impression with global audiences. A lot of people at Cannes are going to be comparing this film and “Oldboy”. How do you think these two films compare?

Park Chan-wook: Well, I made several other films after “Oldboy”, and now it feels like I only have dim memories of making that movie. So while shooting “Thirst”, I didn’t particularly have “Oldboy” in mind, nor did I try to make a better, or more interesting film than “Oldboy”. Of course audiences will be comparing the two. But as a person who made this film, it’s a difficult question to answer. I would like to direct the question to audiences and I’m curious about what they would say.