The 31st Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) has announced the first-ever Korea visit by Alfonso Cuarón, alongside a dedicated spotlight on nine films from European women and genderqueer filmmakers.
Cuarón, who has won the Academy Award for best director twice, for “Gravity” (2013) and “Roma” (2018), also holds the Venice Film Festival’s best screenplay prize for “Y Tu Mamá También” (2001) and a Golden Lion for “Roma.” He first caught Hollywood’s attention with “Y Tu Mamá También,” a portrait of youth and desire, before taking “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” (2004) in a moodier, more personal visual direction than the series had gone before, and later used extended long takes in “Children of Men” (2007) to pull audiences directly into a world at war. He is expected to appear at BIFF’s opening ceremony and will sit down for an extended conversation with festivalgoers about the camera language and instincts behind his films. An Imax screening of “Gravity,” co-written with his son, filmmaker Jonás Cuarón, will also be at the festival.
Jonás Cuarón’s latest feature, “Campeón Gabacho,” will have its Asian premiere in the World Cinema section, followed by a post-screening Q&A. Since writing on “Gravity,” the younger Cuarón has built his own filmography with “Desierto” (2015) and “Chupa” (2023). “Campeón Gabacho,” starring Juan Daniel García Treviño, Leslie Grace, Rubén Blades, Eddie Marsan, Rosario Dawson and Cheech Marin, follows a Mexican immigrant building a life in the United States, and was produced by Jonás Cuarón alongside his father and Gabriela Rodriguez under their Esperanto Filmoj banner, with Nicolás Celis also producing.
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Elsewhere at the festival, BIFF is showcasing Europe
Elsewhere at the festival, BIFF is showcasing “Europe! Voices of Women+ in Film,” a program run with the European Film Promotion (EFP), spotlighting nine officially selected films through targeted promotion and industry networking. The lineup spans period drama, documentary and contemporary narrative work built around questions of freedom, memory and family, with four of the nine as feature debuts. May el-Toukhy‘s “Woman Unknown,” winner of the Golden Lion at Venice, anchors the group; el-Toukhy became the first Danish woman filmmaker to take that prize, while Mathilde Arcel won the Volpi Cup for best actress in the same film. Also included are Marine Atlan’s debut “La Gradiva,” Pegah Ahangarani’s “Rehearsals for a Revolution,” Sandra Wollner’s “Everytime,” winner of the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes, Margherita Ferrari’s debut “Föa – Once Upon a Future,” Isabelle Stever’s “I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming,” Marie Kreutzer’s “Gentle Monster,” Shahrbanoo Sadat’s “No Good Men” and Sarah Arnold’s debut “Too Many Beasts.” Judith Godrèche’s “A Girl’s Story,” part of this year’s gala presentations, joins Angela Schanelec’s “My Wife Cries,” Janay Boulos and Abd Alkader Habak’s “Birds of War,” Jacqueline Lentzou’s “A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra,” winner of the Horizons Award for Best Director at Venice, and Konstantina Kotzamani’s “Titanic Ocean” among the additional selections.
Five directors from the program, el-Toukhy, Godrèche, Ferrari, Lentzou and Kotzamani, will travel to Busan to present their films. Godrèche will also take part in a Cine Class session, “Women, Rewriting the Screen,” and BIFF and EFP will co-host a Talk-to-Talk panel, “Women Directors: Taking the Scene,” bringing together Ferrari, el-Toukhy and Lentzou alongside Iranian director Marjan Khosravi (“Dreams of the Wild Oaks”), Chinese director Michelle Zhou (“Big Little Things”) and Afghan director Zainab Entezar (“771 Days”).
BIFF programmer Seo Seunghee said that in reviewing films for this year’s festival, she noticed European women directors becoming more prominent among the strongest titles under consideration, in both volume and quality. “Moreover, the fact that four of the nine invited films are feature debuts is also an indicator of the generational shift taking place in European cinema,” Seo said. “Our ongoing collaboration with EFP has become a reliable channel for discovering and validating outstanding films and filmmakers, and the results are fully reflected in this year’s lineup.”
EFP managing director Irina Ignatiew-Lemke said the Europe
EFP managing director Irina Ignatiew-Lemke said the “Europe! Voices of Women+ in Film” initiative lets EFP and its member organizations “join forces to give distinctive European voices greater international visibility.” She added, “Busan is an important platform for bringing these filmmakers and their works into dialogue with audiences and industry professionals in Asia. By combining the festival’s selection with EFP’s targeted promotion and networking, we are proud to support underrepresented voices and create opportunities for the next generation of women+ filmmakers.”
The program runs in collaboration with BIFF, the Sydney Film Festival and Festival do Rio, with support from the Creative Europe – MEDIA Programme of the European Union. This year’s participating national film promotion organizations are Austrian Films, Cinecittà, the Czech Film Center, the Danish Film Institute, German Films and Unifrance, with Cineuropa serving as media partner.
The 31st Busan International Film Festival will run Oct. 6-15 at the Busan Cinema Center and venues throughout Busan, with the 21st Asian Contents & Film Market held Oct. 10-13.
