South Korea’s Jeonju International Film Festival has revealed the selection for this year’s Jeonju Cinema Project pitching programme, including new titles from Fighter director Jero Yun and Canadian filmmaker Isiah Medina.
Jeonju Cinema Project: Next Edition has increased this year’s selection from six to eight – four in the international and four in the domestic project categories – following a reported increase in submissions.
This year’s Korean projects are Tae Jun-sik’s 1997, Lim Sun-ae’s Fixed Love, Fixed Girl, Jero Yun’s Breath and Lee Sangcheol’s My Dear.
Projects in the international category are Khoroldorj Choijoovanchig’s Colors Of White Rock (France), Medina’s Gangsterism (Canada), Lam Can-Zhao’s documentary Reality Show (China) and José Luis Torres Leiva’s When Clouds Hide The Shadow (Chile).
After the pitching event, held on May 2 during the festival, a finalist in each category will win a maximum budget of KW100m ($84,000) to complete their film in time for a world premiere at the next edition of the Jeonju film festival.
The festival takes charge of the films’ investment and distribution in Korea.
The Jeonju Cinema Project aims to “discover and support creative, challenging feature projects from home and abroad” and has produced films such as Locarno-awarded The First Lap, directed by Kim Dae-hwan, and Dane Komljen’s Afterwater, which screened in the Berlinale Forum earlier this month.
Jeonju lab selection
The festival also announced 10 titles for the Jeonju lab mentoring programme, which aims to discover and support creative Korean projects, regardless of genre or form, from development stage. These include Kim Soojung’s drama project Portrait Of A Jeju Family and Lee Hyewon’s documentary Find My Real DNA.
The festival noted “wider genre diversity in this year’s entries, from YouTube content to web dramas,” and noted an 8% increase in documentary projects.
Selection jury members included producer Lee Dongha, CEO of Red Peter (Train To Busan) and Glass Garden director Shin Su-won.
Jeonju lab will provide the 10 projects with $4,200 (KW5m) each along with a three-month intensive mentoring programme with film professionals. A total of $16,800 (KW20m) will be split between the projects commensurate to their performance at the end.
The 23rd Jeonju International Film Festival will run April 28 - May 7 and has committed to take place as a physical event.
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