These are our ten recommended documentaries from the Busan International Film Festival, which will take place from October 2 – 11, 2024 in Busan, South Korea.

Ainu Puri by Fukunaga Takeshi – Japan, USA | 2024 – 81 minutes | World Premiere

Shige, an indigenous Ainu person from Shiranuka, Hokkaido, goes Marek fishing with his 10-year-old son Motoki. After praying to the gods dwelling in all things, he skillfully catches a large salmon, which he then prepares for that evening’s meal. The daily life of Shige’s family unfolds like a meticulously crafted narrative film. Rather than highlighting the struggles of the Ainu, who have long lost their territory and now their language, and have faced discrimination, Ainu Puri focuses on the strength and beauty of Shige and Motoki’s life together. Director Fukunaga Takeshi avoids exoticizing or othering the Ainu people and instead captures their journey with a natural, fluid narrative that leads to a certain conclusion. The film’s intelligent and thoughtful gaze creates intriguing shots that evoke a cinematic sense in this modern ethnographic study. (KANG Sowon)

Trailer:

At the Park by Sohn Koo-yong – Korea | 2024 – 86 minutes | World Premiere

Following Afternoon Landscape (2020) and Night Walk (2023), Sohn Koo-yong presents his third feature documentary. A cinematic wanderer who savors spaces and finds poetry in nature, Sohn ventures into a park this time with Oh Kyu-won’s poem The Breath of the Garden in his hand. As the 24-verse poem that begins with the line “At 2 in the afternoon, a butterfly fluttered close to the ground” appears as text on the screen, at the park, a bird settles down on a branch, clouds cover the sun, a cat washes its face, a water wheel turns, a fountain sprays water, a koi swims across the pond, and ants diligently go about their work. This “230 square meters of universe,” where the world of text and image merge seamlessly, is perfectly complete in its meaningful meaninglessness. Sohn presents a world that glimmers with fragile transparency, using the repetition, variation, and circulation of minimal things. The film captures a walker’s world, both empty and full at once. (KANG Sowon)

Trailer:

Black Box Diaries by Ito Shiori – Japan, UK, USA | 2024 – 102 minutes

This documentary follows the five-year legal battle of Ito Shiori, a journalist who has become a symbol of Japan’s #MeToo movement, credited with forever changing the lives of Japanese women. In 2015, Ito was sexually assaulted by Yamaguchi Noriyuki, a prominent journalist who wrote the biography of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. Despite reporting the incident to the police immediately after, the investigation stalled for nearly two years. In 2017, she became the first Japanese woman to publicly come forward as a sexual assault survivor and initiated a full-scale legal battle. Director Ito Shiori meticulously weaves together the beginning of her legal fight, the subsequent process, and the harrowing internal struggles she faced as she was pushed to her limits, while also exposing the flaws in Japan’s judicial system. Her courageous record of events will serve as a beacon of hope for other women who may face similar ordeals in the future. (JO Ji-hoon)

K-Number by Jo Seyoung – Korea | 2024 – 112 minutes | World Premiere

Mioka Miller, with K-Number 723915, has visited Korea multiple times since 2008 in search of her family, but each attempt has ended in failure. She was found on the streets in 1974 and later adopted by an American family. But she wasn’t an orphan, nor was she abandoned—so why was she sent to the United States? The film K-Number is titled after the identification numbers assigned to children sent for adoption. It follows Mioka’s search for her birth mother with the help of ‘Banet’, a group that aids overseas Korean adoptees find their roots. The documentary takes viewers through various institutions, from Holt Children’s Services to record offices and community centers, as experts provide testimony and countless documents are examined, uncovering the harsh realities behind terms like “home shopping babies,” “state-sponsored human trafficking,” and “sweeping away disadvantaged children.” The long process of facing the truth is presented at a brisk and determined pace. Director Jo Seyoung’s camera is relentless in its pursuit of the truth, while remaining by the side of other Miokas who are still seeking answers in Korean society. (KANG Sowon)

Trailer:

Mother′s Household Ledger by Sung Seungtaek – Korea | 2024 – 90 minutes | World Premiere

Mother’s household ledgers contain a lifetime of arduous years. While her memory fades as she grows older, the details of her daily life, meticulously recorded in the household ledgers for 48 years since 1969, remain as traces of her existence. Director Seong Seungtaek discovered these ledgers among his elderly parents’ belongings when they moved in together after 30 years apart. Carefully examining those records, which are both precious documentation of his family history and his mother’s intimate diary, the director creates another important historical document. As Mother’s Household Ledger gradually intertwines the family story with modern Korean history and their shared memories, our hearts are profoundly stirred. The mother wrote down the passage of time, and the son now illuminates the world imbued with that time. (HONG Eunmi)

Trailer:

Ms. Hu’s Garden by Pan Zhiqi – China | 2024 – 103 minutes | International Premiere

In the slums of Chongqing, China, Ms. Hu tirelessly collects strange garbage from the city center and brings them home. She drags back dinosaur heads, giant eggs, and mushroom models, possibly discarded after an amusement park closed down or an event ended, and builds a garden of dreams in her yard. With her unique optimism and surreal imagination, she has built a fairy-tale world of absurdity, a small shrine hung with wishes like lanterns, a bizarre paradise crafted as an escape from harsh reality. She has a son suffering from depression, who sees his mother as the “world’s most foolish mom, who works so hard yet is so poor.” Her place is also set to be demolished soon. Director Pan Zhiqi documented the lives of this mother and son over 10 years for this documentary, which is an impressive portrait of modern China as the relentless expansion of a commercialized city continuously displaces the lower class. (KANG Sowon)

Trailer:

No Other Land by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor – Palestine, Nepal | 2024 – 96 minutes

Basel is a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta in the West Bank. From a young age, he has resisted the forced evictions by the Israeli military and documented the harsh realities of his village. He befriends Yuval, a young Israeli journalist who comes to write articles that are helpful for Palestine, and an unexpected bond that forms between them. Yet there is also an unbridgeable divide, as they live in completely different worlds just 30 minutes apart. This unique film, created over four years from 2019 by four Israeli and Palestinian activists, uses the camera as the ultimate weapon in exposing the harsh realities of Palestinian resistance, as a tool for dialogue in an improbable friendship, and as a means to preserve the memory of a village on the brink of disappearing. (JO Ji-hoon)

Trailer:

The First Responders by Ryu Hyung-seok – Korea | 2024 – 114 minutes | World Premiere

Director Ryu Hyung-seok, who served as a conscripted firefighter during his mandatory military service, made a documentary about firefighters. Responding to calls from those on the edge of life and death, these modern-day heroes at the Yangsan Firestation and Ulsan Fire Headquarters are the focus of The First Responders. Without voiceover narration or interview shots, the film captures not only the team’s work and daily lives, but also their inner darkness, desires, and the difficult fate inherent in their profession. Here, the camera is not simply a tool for recording but is one of them, acting as their eyes. “Just strip away all emotion and focus on what you need to do,” one firefighter says, and the documentary mirrors this approach, moving steadily forward without being swept up by emotional waves. Yet the film inevitably reaches heart-warming moments. This documentary offers an exceptionally humanistic insight into the profession. (KANG Sowon)

Trailer:

The last of the Sea Women by Sue Kim – USA | 2024 – 87 minutes

In The Last of the Sea Women, an extraordinary band of feisty grandmother warriors wage a spirited battle against vast oceanic threats. Often called real-life mermaids, the haenyeo divers of South Korea’s Jeju Island have been renowned for centuries for diving to the ocean floor—without oxygen —to harvest seafood for their livelihood. Today, with most haenyeo now in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, their traditions and way of life are in imminent danger. But these fierce, funny, hardworking women refuse to give an inch, aided by a younger generation’s fight to revive their ancestral lifestyle through social media. Peering into what drives haenyeo young and old, this moving documentary zeroes in on their tight-knit friendships, savvy independence, and infectious sense of empowerment, unfolding into an uplifting tale of women taking on world powers to protect their beloved ocean and inspiring a new generation. (BusanIFF 2024)

Trailer:

Xixi by Wu Fan – Taiwan, Philippines, Korea | 2024 – 100 minutes

Wu Fan, a director from Taiwan, becomes fascinated by the free spirit of XiXi, a dancer and performance artist she meets by chance while studying in Berlin. XiXi, originally from Shanghai, marries a French husband and moves to France, where she gives birth to a daughter. However, believing that freedom is the most important value in life, XiXi leaves her home to wander across Europe for her artistic pursuits. Her husband, unable to understand this way of life, declares divorce and attempts to keep her away from their daughter. Now, her lifestyle faces a major challenge. Director Wu captures the results of a free lifestyle and the impact of such a life closely, based on her intimate relationship with XiXi, exploring the value of freedom, self-identity, femininity, and the effects of intergenerational wounds and trauma. It is a remarkable and intense film that leads the audience towards introspection. (JO Ji-hoon)

Trailer:

For this festival we also recommended 10 Short Films (See HERE) and 20 Feature Films (See PART 1 and PART 2).

More information: https://www.biff.kr/eng/