We continue with our recommendations for the Busan International Film Festival, which will take place from October 2 – 11, 2024 in Busan, South Korea.

Red Nails by Hwang Seulgi – Korea | 2024 – 86 minutes | World Premiere

Hong has many circumstances tied to poverty, leading to numerous secrets and misunderstandings. Even as she moves her mother, who is in the early stages of dementia, from a remote nursing home to her small single room, what Hong truly desires isn’t her mother, but her mother’s bank account. Her past relationship is marred by unpaid debts and harsh words, and the new one she’s just begun is precariously adorned with lies in an attempt to make it work. Meanwhile, her dreams remain distant, and her youth slowly fades away. (JUNG Hanseok)

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Revolver by Oh Seung-uk – Korea | 2023 – 115 minutes

It’s not a bloody revenge story. Revolver is rather a film that strives to avoid unnecessary sacrifices. Police officer Ha Su-yeong (Jeon Do-yeon) served a two-year sentence for being involved in corruption. She agreed to take all the blame in exchange for a large compensation but ends up with nothing. Su-yeong follows the trails of those involved in the case to get her promised payment, with a revolver in her hand.  (SONG Kyung-won)

Trailer:

Somebody by Kim Yeo-jung, Lee Jung-chan – Korea | 2024 – 112 minutes | World Premiere

Yeong-eun, a swimming instructor, lives alone with So-hyun, her 7-year-old daughter. So-hyun exhibits increasingly violent tendencies, which are spiraling out of control. 20 years later, new characters emerge: Min and Hae-yeong, who deal with cases of solitary deaths and live together. They each harbor their own personal hell. In that damp hell, the presence of the mother is ever-present. (HONG Eunmi)

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Swimming in a Sand Pool by Yamashita Nobuhiro – Japan | 2024 – 88 minutes

A film adaptation of a play made by a high school drama club, directed by Yamashita Nobuhiro of Linda Linda Linda (2006). It’s essentially a coming-of-age film about teenagers made by teenagers. During summer vacation, at a high school, the PE teacher makes female students who skipped his class clean the outdoor swimming pool. The drained pool is full of sand blown in from a nearby baseball field, and the task of scooping up the sand and putting it in buckets seems meaningless. Chizuru, who used to be unbeatable in the swim club in middle school even against boys, practices imaginary swimming in the sand-filled pool, while Kokoro, who is serious about cultivating her feminine charm by diligently applying makeup, doesn’t care about cleaning. With their own stories, Miku, who diligently practices dance moves typically performed by men, and Yui, who was the swim club captain last year, and the other girls meet and converse on the pool floor under the summer sun, where unexpected conflicts arise and resolve in unexpected ways. (NAM Dong-chul)

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Tango at Dawn by Kim Hyo-eun – Korea | 2024 – 117 minutes | World Premiere

Tango at Dawn tells the story of three women. Ji-won, who is clear-cut and straightforward, is hiding out and securing a job at a factory after being swindled by a friend; Ju-hui, Ji-won’s roommate, who is kind to everyone and always remains optimistic; and Han-byeol, who started working at a young age, became a team leader, and is quite selfish and irresponsible. One day, an accident happens to a fellow worker, and the reactions and solutions offered by these three women involved in the accident are remarkably different. The emotional tension arising from their differences, and the profound impact that transcends that tension, becomes increasingly powerful through the film’s multidimensional character development and subtle emotional buildup.  (JUNG Hanseok)

Trailer:

The Face of Hwanhee by Lee Jeahan – Korea | 2024 – 126 minutes | World Premiere

Composed of four chapters— House of a writer, The Visitors, To the never never land, and The face of Hwanhee—the film unfolds like a collection of short stories, and can be experienced as such. In this narrative, Hwanhee is neither anyone nor nobody. The four stories, which feature a student visiting a teacher, an unwelcome guest at a restaurant, a man contemplating studying abroad and his girlfriend and his mother, and a novelist and a reader, each contain stories within stories. They traverse freely between night and day, fact and truth, narrative and image, within and outside the frame, dream and reality, actors and characters, the singular and the plural, and chance and fate, stimulating all the senses. (JUNG Hanseok)

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The Height of the Coconut Trees by Du Jie – Japan | 2024 – 100 minutes | World Premiere

The film follows two couples. A man working as a cook in a restaurant and a woman working in a pet shop are in a long-term relationship and often eat lunch together in the park during their lunch break. One day, the man finds a ring swallowed by a fish and gives the ring to the woman as a gift. The other couple consists of a woman who has already committed suicide and a man who has acquired the old inn where she killed herself. Tension arises when the woman who received the ring visits the old inn, which is the space of the other couple. Seeing the woman visiting the inn alone, the inn owner suspects she might commit suicide and starts following her. (NAM Dong-chul)

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Traveling Alone by Ishibashi Yuho – Japan | 2024 – 94 minutes | World Premiere

The film delicately conveys the memory of first love and the sense of loss, moving back and forth between past and present. Misaki, who has worked in Tokyo for ten years, spends quality time with her family and friends again in her hometown. At an event where classmates gather, she learns that the boy she liked in middle school has died. Unable to forget the memory of their first conversation in the library on a typhoon day, Misaki visits the library again on another typhoon day. Traveling Alone is a film that shows another way to fill the emptiness in one’s heart. While the music they listened to together on an MD player shows the emotional fullness of that time and place, the film only depicts the situation without directly playing the music. (NAM Dong-chul)

Village Rockstars 2 by Rima Das – India, Singapore | 2024 – 107 minutes | World Premiere

Living in a small rural village in Assam, Dhunu lives with her ailing mother, who is growing weak from hard labor, and her immature older brother, who constantly pesters their mother for a motorcycle. Although she is now in her late teens, Dhunu still climbs trees, swims, and most importantly, dreams of continuing her childhood life as a guitarist in her rock band. However, life does not unfold as Dhunu wishes. As she faces the bitter and sour moments of life, she stands on the threshold of leaving her once-happy childhood behind. (PARK Sun Young)

You Are the Apple of My Eye by Cho Young-myoung – Korea | 2024 – 108 minutes | World Premiere

Jinwoo and his friends, who are each experiencing the peak of their puberty, have their own unique interests and causes of trouble. The one common interest among them is Seon-ah, the model student who embodies both grace and beauty. To them, Seon-ah looks like an unattainable dream, even though she’s in the same class. Despite their contrasting personalities and academic performances, Jin-woo and Seon-ah develop a close bond by showing interest in each other’s different sides. Their relationship navigates through the lovey-dovey and bittersweet phases of high school and into the heart of their poignant youth. (HONG Eunmi)

Trailer:

To see the first part of this article please go HERE.
For this festival we also recommended 10 Documentaries (Go HERE) and 10 Short Films (Go HERE).

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