The Busan International Film Festival, which takes place every fall in the beachfront of the country’s largest port city, unveiled its 2025 lineup in Seoul on Tuesday. The 30th edition of the fest will run Sept. 17-26.
The Busan festival opens with director Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, a black comedy thriller based on the novel The Ax by Donald Westlak, which follows Man-su (played by Lee Byung Hun) in his desperate struggle to hunt for a new job after being fired from a position he has held for 25 years.
This year’s Busan presents 241 official selection films – up from 224 from last year, including satellite programs and community events taking place throughout the city and entertaining local audiences during the festival period.
Busan has also strengthened its competitive section, highlighting contemporary Asian cinema, with 14 Asian titles set to vie for the festival’s key award categories this year with sections including best film, best director, the special jury prize, best actor, and artistic contribution.
The Busan lineup also includes Gloaming in Luomu, the latest work by Asian auteur Zhang Lu, Spying Star by Sri Lankan director Vimukthi Jayasundara, Resurrection by Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan, and Two Seasons, Two Strangers by Miyake Sho, the Locarno-winning latest movie by the rising director of contemporary Japanese cinema.
Left-Handed Girl, produced by Anora director Sean Baker and longtime collaborator and screenwriter Tsou Shih-Chung, will also be screened in Busan this year. Taiwan’s Shu Qi’s Girl, a directorial debut, Seven O’Clock Breakfast Club for the Brokenhearted by South Korea’s Lim Sun-ae, and Leave the Cat Alone, the debut feature of Japan’s new talent Shigaya Daisuke are also part of the key lineup.
Every evening, Busan presents Open Cinema at its outdoor theater with a lineup of audience-friendly genre films, including The Final Piece, a mystery drama starring Watanabe Ken, action crime thriller The Shadow’s Edge featuring Tony Leung and Jackie Chan, and Measure in Love starring Hsu Kuang-Han and Angela Yuen.
The festival also brings together a list of works by Korean filmmakers abroad. The World Cinema program presents Andrew Ahn’s latest adaptation of The Wedding Banquet, while Flash Forward features Korean-Canadian Lloyd Lee Choi’s Lucky Lu, based on the story of a delivery biker in New York. Other notable features include The Botanist from China, the winner of the Grand Prix of the International Jury for Best Film at Berlin, and The River That Holds our Hands by Chen Jianhang, a Venice Film Festival competition title.
As a satellite program, this year’s festival will present KPop Demon Hunters in a special sing-along screening at Busan. Maggie Kang, the Korean-Canadian director behind the hit Netflix animated feature, will also partake in a program titled “Carte Blanche” – a series of screenings by leading cultural pioneers in Korea and abroad, including director Bong Joon-ho, followed by a conversation with audiences.
For its 30th edition, Oscar-winning Bong Joon-ho, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Juliette Binoche, and Sean Baker are among the high-profile figures who are expected to grace the red carpets.
This year’s Asian Filmmaker of the Year Award goes to the Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who portrayed the resilience of individual freedom against censorship through films like The Circle (2000), Taxi (2015), and It was Just an Accident. Separately, the recipient of this year’s Korean Cinema Award is director-screenwriter Chung Jin-young known for his work that deeply reflects on contemporary Korean history in films like Life and Death of the Hollywood Kid (1994) and National Security (2012). The festival will also dedicate its Camellia Award to Sylvia Chang, one of Asia’s most acclaimed directors, actors, producers and screenwriters who appeared in more than 100 films, such as Murmur of the Hearts (2015) and Love Education (2017).
On the market front, this year’s Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM) will focus on reaffirming its position as “a global business platform,” strengthening networking opportunities and introducing new market trends.
This year’s market expanded its role as a co-production hub by introducing Doc Square, a newly set up networking program tailored to foster exchange and collaboration among documentary creators across Asia. The program is expected to reflect on the Asian documentary landscape, through sessions that gather producers from across Asia to discuss the production environments and current trends in their respective regions.
ACFM will also highlight new trends in AI by inviting global tech leaders from Amazon Web Services (AWS), MegazoneCloud, a cloud service provider, China-based AI audio-visual generational platform PixVerse and Kling Ai. InnoAsia will bring together technology experts and film industry professionals in an attempt to foster creative partnerships for the Asian content industry, with a series of conferences led by the key participants.
As part of the key program of the market, Asian Project Market will showcase 30 selections from 15 countries by emerging Asian directors. Asian Cinema Fund will offer three funding programs – the Script Development Fund, the Post-Production Fund and the Asian Network of Documentary Fund. Fourteen projects have been chosen out 850 submissions this year.
The 20th Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM) will also present Busan Story Market – a key marketplace for original IPs for content providers – focusing on a strong lineup of IPs from Taiwan and Japan.
Six Taiwanese IPs have been selected this year that blend refined storytelling and unique characters, while six Japanese IPs, including books, comics and TV drama, have been selected, highlighting on Japan’s distinctive storytelling. For the Korean IP section, the Market has selected 19 original IPs, with genres including romance, fantasy and animation.