Indonesia Celebrates Renaissance at Busan, Aims to Shift From ‘Big Market to Big Player’
variety.comNaman Ramachandran The Indonesian film industry is poised to spread its wings globally as the country’s filmmaking boom is the subject of a focus at the Busan International Film Festival.
Films from the country now routinely get selected and win prizes at major international festivals. The local market in Indonesia, which has the fourth-largest population in the world with 277 million, is rapidly expanding with homegrown productions accounting for a significant share.
Indonesia is also bolstering its cultural policies that include an annual $13 million international co-production grant. Featured at Busan this year are 15 features, shorts and series.
The festival has been inviting Indonesian films since 1996. In 2004, the late Kim Ji-seok, after whom one of the festival’s top awards is named now, curated a program titled ‘Garin [Nugroho] and the Next Generation: New Possibility of Indonesian Cinema.’ “I realized that the next generation is already visible, but overlooked,” festival programmer Park Sungho told Variety. “Last year, I was pleasantly surprised by the news that the Indonesian box office not only recovered from the pandemic, but also reached a point where the domestic market share was over 50%.
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