Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival

Bucheon Choice: Features

Rich CLINE

Rich CLINE is a London-based journalist who covers film weekly for a variety of media outlets, from BBC Radio to his review site ‘Shadows on the Wall’, which was launched in 1995 as the UK’s first ezine. He is chair of the London Film Critics’ Circle and a voting member of HFPA, Galeca’s Dorian Awards, Fipresci, The Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards and OFCS. A Tomatometer-approved critic for more than 20 years, he has contributed to a wide range of newspapers, magazines, websites, radio and TV. He has served as a festival jury member in Venice, Berlin, London, Abu Dhabi, St Louis, Thessaloniki, Cardiff and Turin, and has covered major events on every continent.

Kier-La JANISSE

Kier-La JANISSE is a film writer, programmer, producer and founder of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies. She is the author of House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (2012/2022), A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (2007), and has been an editor on numerous books including Warped & Faded: Weird Wednesday and the Birth of the American Genre Film Archive (2021), Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Film and Television (2017) and Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015). She was a producer on David Gregory’s Tales of the Uncanny (2020) and wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021) for Severin Films, where she is a house producer.

KIM Sunyoung

After KIM Sunyoung made her debut as actress on stage in 1995 with the play “After the Play”, she had her first film role in She's on Duty (2005). Since then, she has moved back and forth between the stage, screen, and TV, garnering attention with movies like Happy Bus Day, Communication & Lies, Herstory, Mal-Mo-E: The Secret Mission, Three Sisters, Dream Palace, and dramas like Reply 1988, When the Camellia Blooms, Crash Landing on You, Homemade Love Story, or The Silent Sea. Through her unique, delicate, and realistic acting, she has established herself as the best "scene stealer" in Korean cinema. In 2023, she won the Best Actress Award at the Asian Film Festival for Dream Palace, and in 2021, she scored the Baeksang Arts Award, the Busan Film Critics Award, the Buil Film Award, the Blue Dragon Film Award, the Korean Association of Film Critics Award the Korean Film Producers Association Award and many other national and international awards for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in Three Sisters. In 2018, she received many awards for her performance as supporting actress, such as the Wildflower Film Award for her appearance in Happy Bus Day, the Chunsa Film Art Award for Communication & Lies, the Buil Film Award for Herstory, and the Korea Gold Award for Mal-Mo-E: The Secret Mission. Following her strong performance in the recent dramas Crash Course in Romance and Queenmaker her next the movie Concrete Utopia is set to be released soon.

KONAKA Kazuya

Born in 1963. From his early age, he started making 8mm film with his elder brother, also well-known as screenwriter of Ultraman series. First film directed is CLAWS (1976), a movie in which cannibal bear attacks people, influenced by JAWS (1975). His legitimate career began from junior in high school, making short film Turn Point 10:40 (1979) which earned him Grand Prix at high school section of the Japan Film Festival. After become a member of Rikkyo University, first 16mm film The Land Beyond the Starry Sky (1986) sponsored by Bungei-za theater. In 1997, he directed Ultraman Zearth 2 (1997), the prominent milestone in his consecutive directing of Ultraman series. His directing skills also stretched out to the animation, Astro Boy (2003), and he is still active in a wide range of fields on the film industry. With his autobiographical film Singe 8, he will introduce his own philosophy and skills as a director with the audience of 27th BIFAN.

LEE Wonsuk

He studied in film at the American Film Institute(AFI) while working in the advertising industry in the United States. From his debut feature film How to Use Guys with Secret Tips (2013), which received favorable reviews, to The Royal Tailor (2014), both of his films were recognized for their cinematic quality, winning the Audience Award at Udine Far East Film Festival. He served as an operating director of the Incheon Film Commission and while doing various broadcasting activities, he clearly shows his own attractive color through the short film Lala Land (2017) and the recently released Killing Romance.

Korean Fantastic: Features

CHO Young Kag

He started filming at Film Institute Seoul and has been active in the independent film scene for a long time. He workeded as a programmer in Indie forum, also a general manager of Korea Independent Film & Video of Assosiation, a festival director of Seoul Independent Film Festival, and head of the Indie Ground Center at Independent Art Film Distribution and Support Center. He produced The King of Pigs (2011), The Fake (2013), The Satellite Girl and Milk Cow (2014), Now Playing (2015) and Film Adventure (2018), which won LG HiEntech Best Korean Fantasic Film and Korean Fantastic Best Actor Award at BIFAN.

Rina DAMAYANTI

Since 2004 she joined SET Films as a Producer and handles numerous feature films of Director Garin NUGROHO, such as: Opera Jawa (2006), Under The Tree (2008), The Blue Generation (2009), The blindfold (2012), Setan Jawa (2016) and also handles many production of arts performances, such as: Tusuk Konde (2010), Selendang Merah (2013), A Planet (2020), Setan Jawa (2017-2022) a silent movie with live orchestra that have been performed in international art festivals such as: Asia TOPA, Holland Festival, Malay Festival of Art. She is the Festival Director for Jakarta Film Week an International-scale film festival powered by the Jakarta Provincial Government that given an opportunity to discover the talent in the film industry. She is also a curator member for Indonesia Film programs: Layar Indonesiana, Indonesiana TV, ACFFest. As a producer she also works on various fields such as feature, short movie, documentary, advertising films.

PARK Dae Min

He made his debut as a writer when he won the screenplay contest for the detective drama Aerialist, set in the late period of Joseon. In 2009, he made his directorial debut with Private Eye (2009), a film adaptation of the same screenplay of Aerialist. Also, the film was selected for Bucheon Choice: Features which is the competition section of BIFAN 2009 and since then he started establishing a relationship with the film festival. Since then, he has steadily made genre films such as Seondal: The Man who Sells the River (2016) and Special Delivery (2022).

Bucheon Choice: Shorts & Korean Fantastic: Shorts

Kai KO

Since winning Best New Performer at Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival for You Are the Apple of My Eye (2011), he has developed into a versatile actor who has tackled various genre roles in recent years. During the filming of The Road to Mandalay (2016), he developed a strong rapport with director Midi Z, giving him a new perspective on cinematography and screenplay interpretation. That film won the Fedeora Award for Best Film at the Venice International Film Festival, and for him, the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival nomination for Best Leading Actor. He then took on the challenge of a repressed gay character in Moneyboys (2021), which was selected to compete in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes. He won the Best Leading Actor Award Till We Meet Again (2021), the opening film of the 25th BIFAN, at Taipei Film Festival in 2022. With a rich and varied filmography, he has built a high profile and strong fan base in Chinese-speaking regions.

YI Jin Hee

YI Jin Hee participated as a producer in the film Whatcha Wearin’? (2012) and the film The Merciless (2017). In 2018, he founded SEE AT Film Co., Ltd., which produced films Kingmaker (2022), Love and Leashes (2022), and film Kill Boksoon (2023), and co-produced the series Bloodhounds (2023).

Alexander ZAHLTEN

Alexander ZAHLTEN is Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. His work touches on topics such as the dramatic changes in the Japanese film industry after 1960 in his book The End of Japanese Cinema (2017), 'amateur' film production, or the history of the connection of electricity and the film industry in Japan. He was Assistant Professor of the Department of Film & Digital of Dongguk University in Seoul, South Korea for one and a half years before joining Harvard in 2012. He has curated film programs for German Film Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, Athénée Français Cultural Center in Tokyo or Parasophia Festival of Contemporary Culture in Kyoto, and was Program Director for Nippon Connection Film Festival, the largest festival for film from Japan, from 2002 to 2010.

Méllès International Festivals Federation(MIFF) Award for Best Asian Film

Josemi BELTRÁN

Since 2011 he is responsible of Film Unit at the Council of San Sebastian. That involves to be the director of Horror and Fantasy Film Festival, the director of Human Rights Film Festival, and also he's on charge of cooperations with another film seasons in the city. He also is film curator for classic movies seasons. He studied journalism and made a lot of work related with arts. In 1992 he founded a Film Society at the Basque University and he began to coordinate different film events.

Patrick VAN HAUWAERT

Patrick VAN HAUWAERT has a degree in computer science and worked for years as freelance projectionist on many local festivals and in local cinema’s. In 2007 he set-up the Razor Reel Flanders Film Festival in Bruges, a small scale film festival dedicated to genre films from all over the world. Furthermore he is also the thriving force behind Fayard, pop-up cinema as well as one of the programmers in the Royal Theatre of Bruges (Stadschouwburg) where he mainly works with local musical talent.

NETPAC Award

Gulnara ABIKEYEVA

Dr. Gulnara Abikeyeva, known Kazakh film critic and film researcher. Program director of the International Film Festival Eurasia in Almaty. During different years she made film magazines Asia-kino, Territoriya Kino as editor-in-Chief, TV programmes about Kazakh cinema. In 2001-2002 she was a Fulbright scholar at Bowdoin College, read lectures in Pittsburgh University and made presentation in Harvard, Yale, Tafts Universities in USA. She is the author of twelve books about cinema, mostly about Kazakhstan and Central Asian countries. Among them Cinema in Central Asia. Rewriting Cultural Histories, co-edited by Michael Rouland and Birgit Beumers, The Unknown New Wave of Central Asian Cinema, co-edited by Kim Ji-Seok, Mahmalbaf’s Film House.

KIM Young-woo

Festival programmer, curator. Kim studied Visual Arts & TV at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, USA. He joined the selection committee of Asian Cinema Fund (ACF) and Asian Project Market (APM), and Busan International Film Festival as a programmer in charge of Asian cinema until 2019, and worked for DMZ Docs as a programmer until 2021. Kim is a member of the Association of Korean Independent Film & Video and currently a programmer of Seoul Independent Film Festival. Kim has also worked with major film festivals in the EU as a programmer and an advisor, such as LOCARNO, IDFA, Red Sea Film Festival, and more.

Angela LEE

Since 2004, she has worked as a programmer and operating director at several film festivals, including Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul, Seoul International Women'S Film Festival, Migrant World Film Festival, Child Rights Film Festival with Save the Children, and Chuncheon SF Film Festival. Now she is preparing Scifian Festa which is a new alternative independent Sci-fi film festival as a festival director. As a film critic, she writes columns for media such as Munhwa Daily, Redian, mediatoday, Monthly Tongdo, and The Hyundae Bulkyo and she produced the independent documentary Re-sound (2018).