20 Must-see feature films from the 31st Busan International Film Festival 2026 (Part 2)

By Asian Film Festival on October 7, 2026 • ( Leave a comment )

We continue with our list of feature films you shouldn’t miss at the Busan International Film Festival (South Korea) which will take place from October 6 – 15, 2026.

Hinotama: Ball of Fire by Yaza Takenoshin – Japan | 2026 – 112 minutes | World Premiere
Section: Vision – Asia

As his parents’ marriage fractures and eventually collapses into divorce, high schooler Takeshi becomes increasingly obsessed with hunting for a mysterious ‘ball of fire’ rumored by a childhood friend. Using this quest to escape the quiet turmoil at home, Takeshi leaves his younger brother to shoulder the family’s emotional weight without realizing it. (GU Pengyuan)

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PARADISE LOST by Yeon Sang-ho – Korea | 2026 – 101 minutes
Section: Gala Presentation

A school bus carrying thirteen children vanishes without a trace. Seven days later, several of the children are found dead in the basement of a warehouse in a mining town, and the search is soon called off. The incident leaves So-young (Kim Hyun-Joo) living in anguish, not even knowing whether her son Sun-woo is alive or dead. Nine years later, So-young meets Sun-woo every day through an augmented reality program called ‘Children of Paradise’. Then a grown-up Sun-woo (Bae Hyeon-seong) appears before her—a stranger utterly unlike the son she knows. (JEONG Jihye)

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Recovery by Im Yeonjeong – Korea | 2026 – 77 minutes | World Premiere
Section: Wide Angle – Documentary Competition

“I wanted to make an action film. An action film featuring a woman.” Yeonjeong talks about her dream before a huge wave, and immediately she is throwing herself around the mat at a jiu-jitsu gym. To understand action means to understand the body, which is why she learns surfing as well as martial arts. Recovery begins at a fairly cheerful pace. Just when we start to wonder whether this is a film about the director trying different sports, Yeonjeong carefully opens the stained black box of her memories. Dark and frightening memories that no one would want to reopen appear on screen as animation, and we come to understand that her desire to make a women’s action film is tied to her trauma. (KANG Sowon)

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silver express by Tanaka Miki – Japan | 2026 – 97 minutes | World Premiere
Section: In Competition

The story follows Chieri (Okamoto Yui), a young woman who has never experienced romantic or sexual attraction. Feeling perpetually out of place in a world obsessed with romance, her isolation finally lifts when she meets Shoya (Kurihara Hayato). Also lacking romantic feelings, Shoya offers Chieri a rare sense of understanding. However, their sanctuary begins to unravel over a fundamental difference: while Chieri is asexual, Shoya is aromantic and experiences physical longing that Chieri cannot reciprocate. (Karen PARK)

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SINNER by Hong Sung-min – Korea | 2026 – 110 minutes | World Premiere
Section: Korean Cinema Today – Panorama

When the ostensibly unblemished prosecutor Kim Seokgyu (Jung Sung-il) is nominated for Minister of Justice, the opposition party raises questions about the 1994 “Migeum Arson-Murder Case.” They allege that he conducted a coercive investigation against the illiterate suspect Hong Sunhwa (Park Ji-hyun) and sought the death penalty; however, the crisis passes when a letter left by her comes to light. Yet, after belatedly reading her plea for her innocence to be conveyed to her son Eunsu, Seokgyu begins to reinvestigate the closed case. A prosecutor who once sought justice only within documents and courtroom walls confronts the truths he had overlooked through the voices of those involved. Only then the chasm between facts on paper and the substantive truth reveals itself. As the suspect Sunhwa’s past wrongful conviction intersects with the present crisis of conscience faced by prosecutor Seokgyu, the audience is given a chance to reflect on values so easily forgotten or brushed aside. The film movingly reminds us that while we cannot undo the past, we can at least feel shame for it. (SONG Kyung-won)

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The Birds by Sohn Hyun-lok – Korea | 2026 – 139 minutes | World Premiere
Section: Vision – Korea

Yeok (Kang Kyunghun), a middle-aged teacher raising a son and a daughter alone, witnesses students fall to their deaths from the rooftop of the school where she works. Discovering that her daughter Hyejeong (Sim Su-bin) was also present at the scene, she presses her for answers, but Hyejeong only repeats the same words: ‘There was a bird in the sky.’ As the strange, unexplained deaths continue, Yeok, together with a reporter covering the case and a streamer who runs a birding channel, head towards the birds’ habitat. (JEONG Jihye)

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The First Taste of Loneliness by Gu You – China | 2026 – 135 minutes | World Premiere
Section: In Competition

The film opens with the death of a father, then moves across the Qiantang River to an old apartment where three generations of women live together. The second scene, filmed in a long take lasting over twenty minutes, meticulously observes the inside of the home the father has left behind, discovering the traces of his presence. The camera quietly captures the lives of the three women as they grieve the loss of the husband, father, and grandfather in their own ways. Their names – Luna, Jiang Yue, and Moon – all evoke the moon, echoing what Yue’s father often said when he was alive: “A moon for every river.” (PARK Sunyoung)

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The Flower by Kim Si-jin – Korea | 2026 – 71 minutes | World Premiere
Section: Vision – Korea

Mr. Lee, the director of a crematorium, has spent his entire life working there, seeing the dead off on their final journey. Now, sensing that his own time to depart has come, he returns to the crematorium where he worked for so long, only to find no one particularly glad to see him. In the midst of all this, Lee himself suddenly dies. Astonishingly, no matter how they try to cremate his body, it simply will not burn. (JEONG Jihye)

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The Sea Speaks His Name by Yosep Anggi Noen – Indonesia | 2026 -. 133 minutes | World Premiere
Section: In Competition

Indonesia in 1991, gripped by a dictatorship already decades old, with no end in sight. Laut (Reza Rahadian), a university student who devours everything from the classics to banned books, steps into a discussion group led by Kinan (Dian Sastrowardoyo) and begins to awaken to state violence and the injustices in society. Inspired by the pro-democracy movements in South Korea and the Philippines, he throws himself into the student movement. Leaving behind the comforts of a middle-class home, he dreams of becoming an intellectual of action and chooses a resistance that could cost him his life. But as the net of surveillance tightens, his comrades are arrested one by one, and Laut, in hiding, is seized by plainclothes police and disappears. The family left behind refuses to let go of truth and hope even under a menacing climate of fear, while the survivors are left to wander in agonizing guilt and doubt over having been spared. (PARK Sungho)

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To Be Ordinary by Lee Yun Chan – Taiwan | 2026 – 112 minutes | World Premiere
Section: In Competition

Late one night, Yu Jie heads home from his part-time job on a motorcycle when he ends up in a car accident. A college student and web designer, he has a father who has been unemployed for three year′s a mother who barely speaks to her husband and devotes herself entirely to their children, and a younger sister just entering adolescence. The elderly man responsible for the accident transfers ownership of his house to Yu Jie and pays his medical and living expenses each month to make amends, but he is still plagued with guilt. Meanwhile, Yu Jie’s family, once on the verge of financial and emotional collapse, gradually becomes a family again, eating dinner together. Around the same time, Yu Jie also grows close to his physical therapist Yi-han. Yet this ‘ordinary’ happiness is only momentary. (PARK Sun Young)

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