20 Must-see feature films from the 31st Busan International Film Festival 2026 (Part 1)

By Asian Film Festival on October 6, 2026 • ( Leave a comment )

These are twenty feature films you shouldn’t miss at the Busan International Film Festival (South Korea) which will take place from October 6 – 15, 2026.

771 Days by Zainab Entezar – Afghanistan | 2026 – 71 minutes | World Premiere
Section: Wide Angle – Documentary Competition

771 Days is director Zainab Entezar’s record of the 771 days she spent in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. As the stores, coffee shops, and bookstores she once frequented close, universities are shut down, and all social activities for women are banned, Entezar secretly makes a film on her own. The world seen through her camera lurches violently, turns upside down, collides, and is covered behind something. These images show us what it means to make a movie in a place where women have been stripped of all their rights. After 771 days, Entezar succeeds in escaping Afghanistan with a bag containing a camera, hard drive, and laptop, which are even more dangerous than a bomb. That is precisely where the film begins: Day 771. (KANG Sowon)

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About an Intimate Matter by Sandeep Kumar Paul – India, USA, UK | 2026 – 95 minutes | World Premiere
Section: A Window on Asian Cinema

After graduating from university in Delhi, Swarna returns to Kolkata to teach at a secondary school. A discussion about striking for better working conditions for teachers is underway at the school, but Swarna opposes the idea, insisting that education for students should come first. Then one day, she is brought before the school’s disciplinary committee after a parent files a complaint about a photograph she posted on Facebook. Her personal life is put under scrutiny, and the disciplinary committee members question everything from why she came back to Kolkata and her relationship with her roommate Driti to how she uses social media. (HONG Soin)

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BALER by Oh Sehyeon – Korea | 2026 – 95 minutes | World Premiere
Section: Vision – Korea

Quitting her job and being pregnant – that’s the sum of what we know about Eunju (Kim Seul-ki). Seemingly without much desire or expectation, Eunju heads to the countryside at the suggestion of Changho (Woo Ji-hyeon), who proposes a month of seasonal farm work. She tidies up rice straw left over from threshing, tends to cattle, sits down to eat with rough-hewn men of the countryside, and exchanges brief, trivial, awkward conversations. In the quiet frames, the steady labor of human beings – its lonely gestures, its hours of solitude – seems to permeate the very air. All the while, nature remains indifferent, its beauty almost cruel. (JEONG Jihye)

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Beach Fictions by Lim Hayeon – Korea | 2026 – 144 minutes | World Premiere
Section: In Competition

Tae-ju (Park Hansol), tormented by whispers and rumors swirling around her for reasons she doesn’t understand, boards a train as if fleeing. On the train, she happens to meet novelist Ewha (Ye Sujeong), who tells Tae-ju she resembles the protagonist of a novel she’s writing. Arriving at the beach, Tae-ju meets a street magician named Manhyuk (Kim Wookyum), visits a fortune-teller recommended by Ehwa, and spends some time with complete strangers at a guesthouse. (JEONG Jihye)

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Can I Talk to You? by Yi Seungjun – Korea | 2026 – 111 minutes | World Premiere
Section: Wide Angle – Documentary Competition

The film follows three teenage girls staying at the House of Rothem, a youth shelter, after receiving protective measure no. 1 from the Juvenile Division of the Changwon District Court for acts of delinquency, including running away from home, theft, self-harm, and smoking. The girls confess that they are most afraid of being abandoned, that they hurt themselves because they hate being people for whom, “everything is a weakness” and that they simply want to “breathe.” Yi Seungjun, director of Planet of Snail and In the Absence, does not interview the girls or add voice-over narration. In fact, he does not even film them in a way their faces can be identified. The film’s mystery lies elsewhere. How did these girls, each standing alone at the edge of the world, let the camera approach them so closely? This documentary about the brutal days of youth invites us into a world we have all passed through, yet one that no one truly knows. (KANG Sowon)

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Cattle Run by Kim Ji-hyun – Korea | 2026 – 110 minutes | World Premiere
Section: Korean Cinema Today – Special Premiere

If a friend is ‘a single soul dwelling in two bodies’ (Aristotle), siblings are those whose ‘bodies are divided, but their spirits remain connected’ (from the ‘Brothers’ chapter in Yan Zhitui’s Family Instructions for the Yan Clan). No matter how resentful or wearying it becomes, the bond of blood remains stubbornly deep and enduring. Here are two brothers who run separate ranches and have not exchanged a single word in thirty years. The younger brother, Byeong-soo (Park Hae-jun), clinches his first victory at the Prime Cattle Contest, dethroning his older brother, Man-soo (Ryu Seung-ryong), who had won six consecutive years. On that very night, Man-soo discovers that Byeong-soo’s cow is infected with foot-andmouth disease and reports it. Amid the ensuing chaos of mass culling, Man-soo wishes to save Jang-soo, the sole surviving calf, and after many twists and turns, joins hands with Byeong-soo. (SONG Kyung-won)

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Colors of White Rock by Khoroldorj Choijoovanchig – Mongolia, France | 2026 – 81 minutes
Section: Wide Angle – Documentary Showcase

Through the vast Gobi Desert, trucks loaded with coal travel one after another. At the wheel of one of them sits Maikhuu, a mother of three. The film follows her life on the road over six years, travelling between the coal mines of the Mongolian Gobi Desert and the Chinese border. The endless line of trucks shows how Mongolia’s nomads, who once moved with their cattle in search of grassland, are now becoming a new kind of nomad, following capital and resources instead. Navigating through the desolate desert landscape, the difficult life on the road, and the inner world of a mother living far from her children, the film plainly captures how mining development is changing both nature and people’s lives. Against the overwhelming landscape, the image of a woman at the wheel, passing through a great transformation of the times, stays with you long after the films ends. Mongolian director Khoroldorj Choijoovanchig, whose narrative feature Yellow Colt was invited to BIFF in 2013, returns with his first feature-length documentary. (JO Ji-hoon)

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Dora by July Jung – Korea, France, Luxembourg, Japan | 2026 – 138 minutes
Section: Gala Presentation

Eighteen-year-old Dora (Kim Doyeon), unable to attend school because of a severe psychogenic skin condition, has come with her parents to a summer house in Namhae. There, she spends time with Yeon-su (Song Saebyeok), a painter who studied under her father Sang-hun (Choi Wonyoung), Yeon-su’s Japanese wife Nami (Ando Sakura), and their twin children. Dora, an enigmatic figure who seems hollowed out from within, appears to feel every shift in circumstance and emotion through her skin, and to express it through her skin as well, as her severe rashes repeatedly flare up and subside. Dora’s condition feels like a cruel curse, something one might want to look away from – and yet, strangely, one’s eyes keep being drawn back to her. Dora, in turn, finds herself drawn to Nami, who has battled breast cancer. (JEONG Jihye)

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FULL MOON by Jeong Jihye – Korea | 2026 – 96 minutes | World Premiere
Section: Vision – Korea

Middle schooler Hyemi (Jung Minju) longs to shine as the center of her school dance team. But when a costume mishap occurs on stage during the Jeongwol Daeboreum (Great Full Moon) festival, cracks begin to spread through Hyemi’s once self-assured world. She grows distant from her close friends, and worse still, the existence of her parents – a secret she has kept to herself, hoping the world would never find out – is now in danger of being exposed to everyone. (JEONG Jihye)

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Gu Shi by Amie Song – USA, Hong Kong, Thailand | 2026 – 83 minutes
Section: A Window on Asian Cinema

Memories are given to the spirit of the forest in exchange for stories. The memories that someone relinquishes become the forest’s, and are passed on to those who come to the forest. This magical film by Amie Song suggests that memories, stories, and seemingly futile flapping of wings all together help the world endure its sea of sorrow and despair and carry hope forward. Gu Shi begins with a family of four taking refuge in an old house somewhere between the sea and the forest. While the older sister, plagued by nightmares, sinks into a deep slumber, her younger brother suffers a head injury from an accident. To the siblings who appear to suffer from a hereditary illness that causes memory loss, all the parents can do is to tell them the same old stories again and again. A world where one endures by trading memories for stories – the film’s poetic and mythical evocation of suffering and catastrophe is superb. (CHOI Eun)

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