Busan Film Festival Sets Line-up; Iran’s ‘Scent Of Wind’ To Open; Tony Leung Chiu-Wai Feted As Asian Filmmaker Of The Year

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Korea’s Busan International Film Festival (October 5-14) has announced its full line-up, including opening film Scent Of Wind, directed by Iran’s Hadi Mohaghegh, while Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-Wai will be honoured as Asian Filmmaker Of The Year.Leung has credits including Wong Kar Wai’s In The Mood For Love and Happy Together, as well as the Infernal Affairs trilogy, and more recently, Disney’s Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings.Japanese filmmaker Kei Ishikawa’s A Man, which premiered in Venice, has been set as Busan’s closing film.

Opening film, Scent Of Wind, revolves around a disabled man living with his handicapped son in a remote Iranian village. Mohaghegh previously won Busan’s New Currents Award in 2015 for Immortal.The festival will screen 354 films including 89 world premieres and 13 international premieres, with 100% seating capacity in cinemas, a full program of parties, events and seminars and the participation of international guests.

While the festival held physical screenings during the pandemic, seating and screening numbers were limited and there were very few guests from overseas.Busan is also bringing back its industry platforms, Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM) and Asian Project Market (APM), as in-person events for the first time since 2019.

The festival’s Asian Film Academy and Asian Cinema Fund are also returning.Competition sections include New Currents and the new Kim Jiseok Award section, with the latter established in memory of Busan’s late program director Kim Jiseok (see full line-up for both sections below).Also new is the Korean Cinema Today – Special Premiere section to promote new commercial Korean films, which this year will screen Chung Jiyoung’s The Boys and Bang