South Korea’s Jeonju International Film Festival has revealed the selection for this year’s Jeonju Cinema Project pitching programme, including upcoming titles from Eduardo Williams and Ma Xue.
Jeonju Cinema Project: Next Edition has selected eight titles – four in the international and four in the domestic project categories – maintaining last year’s increase from six.
This year’s Korean projects are Nadia by Moon Chang-yong, Don by Sun Hobin, Lucky, Apartment by KangYu Garam and Slap Bang Bang by Ko Bongsoo and Noh Kyungguen.
Moon Chang-yong’s Becoming Who I Was screened in the Berlinale’s Generation strand in 2017 while Ko Bongsoo’s Delta Boys and Loser’s Adventure played at Jeonju in 2016 and 2017 respectively.
Projects in the international category comprise Krakatoa by Spain’s Carlos Casas, Nothing In Its Place by Turkey’s Burak Çevik, The Human Surge 3 by Argentina’s Eduardo Williams, and Alcestis by China’s Ma Xue.
Çevik’s Forms Of Forgetting played at the Berlinale in the festival’s Forum strand last month and Ma Xue’s South Korean feature White River was selected for IFFR 2023. Williams’ debut The Human Surge won the Pardo d’oro for best film at Locarno’s Filmmakers of the Present in 2016.
After the pitching event, held during the festival in May, a finalist in each category will win a maximum budget of KW100m ($77,000) to complete their film in time for a world premiere at the next edition of the Jeonju film festival.
The Jeonju Cinema Project is a production investment programme that aims to “discover and support creative and adventurous feature film and documentary projects from Korea and abroad”. This year, a total of 50 projects were submitted – 29 Korean and 21 international – an increase of nine on the previous year.
Previous selections include Lois Patiño’s Samsara, which screened in the Encounters section of the Berlinale last month; Eric Baudelaire’s A Flower in the Mouth, which played in Forum at the Berlinale in 2022; and Park Hyuckjee’s Girl Who Dreams About Time, which competed at IDFA last November.
Jeonju has also launched a Work in Progress programme in a bid to “improve the overall quality of Korean independent art films and support their domestic and international distribution”. From 28 submissions, three were selected, the creators of which will meet with overseas film festival programmers as well as industry professionals from Korea and abroad for feedback on their works. The titles were not revealed.
In addition, 10 projects will take part in the Jeonju Lab mentoring programming and two documentaries will be selected for the RoughCut Navigating scheme, aimed at improving the overall quality of Korean documentary features.
The 15th Jeonju Project will be held from April 30 to May 2 during the film festival, which runs April 27 to May 6.
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