Accredited by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF), the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) also holds a qualifying status that opens a path toward Oscar nomination consideration. In a notice distributed that March, FIAPF placed BIFF on its official roster of accredited competitive feature film festivals — a grouping widely known as the A-list — putting the event alongside established gatherings such as those held in Berlin, Venice, and Cannes.
Within months of that announcement, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made public a policy under which top-prize recipients from six international film festivals — Busan among them — would gain automatic eligibility for consideration in the Best International Feature Film category at the Oscars. BIFF has earned a place alongside Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Sundance, and Toronto within the cluster of festivals that industry observers generally regard as occupying the top tier of the global film calendar.
Jung Hanseok, appointed to lead BIFF the previous year, attributed a reported upturn in both the volume and calibre of festival submissions to these developments, noting that filmmakers now had an added reason to put their work forward for consideration. A fully competitive programme, complete with prizes across six categories, was added to BIFF's calendar only the previous year — the categories spanning Best Film, Best Director, Special Jury Award, Best Actor, Best Actress, and an Artistic Contribution Award, with the Best Film honour drawing attention as a route that some films have subsequently taken toward Oscar consideration.
Directing honours for Girl went to Taiwan's Shu Qi at the same ceremony where Zhang Lu's Gloaming In Luomu — a production from the Korean-Chinese filmmaker — collected the top prize for feature film. The festival also presents the Vision Awards — covering entries from both its Korea-focused and Asia-focused programming strands — through a set of independent juries drawn from across the industry, while Jung noted that BIFF's competition strand remains relatively young alongside those of longer-running festivals, and that establishing its credibility and persuading the broader film world of its worth had been among the earliest tasks facing the team.
Pointing to China as a territory where filmmakers' interest in the festival has grown — partly because an invitation to an A-list event carries weight when applying for public funding — Jung noted that Japan had shown a comparable shift, with key industry figures displaying noticeably greater openness toward the BIFF Competition than in the previous year. He added that some filmmakers could now picture a trajectory beginning with the Busan Award for Best Film and extending into an awards campaign at the Academy level. Separately, Korea's Oscars selection committee has put forward Lee Chang-dong's Possible Love as its official entry, a film currently running in Korean cinemas on an Oscars-qualifying basis ahead of a Netflix release. Taking home the top film prize at Busan would open the door to eligibility for a second Korean entry.
Fourteen entries drawn from across Asia — including productions from China, Taiwan, Japan, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, and Iran — make up the Competition slate at BIFF this year, with no clear frontrunner in sight. A seven-member jury at the festival falls under the direction of Zhang Yimou, the acclaimed filmmaker from China.
Jung observed that the Competition section had drawn a warmer reception from participants and audiences than it did when it launched, and he described stabilising and consolidating that section as the programme's foremost goal for the current edition, adding that BIFF plans to keep the section rooted in an Asian viewpoint and guided by values originating from within the region over the longer term. Jung noted that selection rests on the artistic merit of each individual film, and that the 14 titles chosen for the programme are intended, taken as a whole, to map out a cinematic terrain reflecting where Asian cinema stands at this moment — while the question of what "Asian" ought to encompass within that framework remains one the festival continues to examine.
The festival's opening night on Tuesday, 6 October brought a screening of Kim Jong-kwan's The Table: Day And Night to the programme, with Kim Minha taking on hosting duties for the ceremony, while observers noted that entry quality had become more uniform across the Competition section, and that the overall calibre of films selected had risen compared with previous editions.
Among the festival's attending talent, Michelle Yeoh takes home the Asian Filmmaker of the Year distinction, while Hong Kong director Ann Hui accepts the Camellia Award. Maggie Gyllenhaal brings her short film Flesh Impact to the Special Screenings programme, and French actress Isabelle Huppert joins local audiences for a screening of her latest work, All About Corinne.
Among those joining the programme are filmmaker Majid Majidi, whose entry Midday Meal has earned a place in the competition strand and for whom this festival appearance marks a debut visit; animation director Rintaro, a long-established figure in Japanese anime; and Alfonso Cuarón, whose attendance centres on a dedicated IMAX presentation of Gravity alongside the Asian Premiere of Campeón Gabacho, directed by Jonás Cuarón.
This year's BIFF programme spans 246 titles — five beyond the previous edition's count and the broadest slate the festival has assembled since 2019 — with doors opening a day ahead of the schedule followed in prior editions. Noting that Thursday-to-Sunday screenings had been expanded to meet peak-period demand, Jung described the changes as practical steps aimed at giving audiences broader access and more viewing options, and added that pre-sale online bookings alone pointed toward total attendance for the current edition surpassing the previous year's figures — even before box-office windows open on site.
Beyond the Competition and Vision lineups, the festival's programme takes in a Gala Presentation strand of six titles — among them Hirokazu Kore-eda's Look Back and Yeon Sang-ho's Paradise Lost — alongside an Icons strand whose 16-title slate draws on work by Ira Sachs (The Man I Love), Ryusuke Hamaguchi (All Of A Sudden), Pedro Almodovar (Bitter Christmas), Christian Mungiu (Fjord), and Lav Diaz (Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors).
Three opening episodes are set to receive their world premieres through On Screen — drawn from a pair of Netflix productions, The Blue Road and Dead-End Job, alongside Disney's The Remarried Empress. A session entitled "Making Unexpected Stories Resonate" is scheduled for Netflix's Creative Asia day, led by Han Jun-hee, the director behind Blue Road.
Eight titles are on offer through the Open Cinema strand, among them Look Back, Banjong Pisanthanakun's Inherit, and The Violinist — an animated feature by Ervin Han and Raúl García that took home a prize at Annecy. Among the featured programmes are a tribute to the late Korean actor Ahn Sung-ki, presented under the title "Those Beautiful Years, Ahn Sung-ki," alongside a dedicated showcase of Japanese animation.
Three figures anchor this edition of the Carte Blanche programme — director Kim Jee-woon and cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo, both from South Korea, alongside Chinese actress Fan Bingbing. Eight works are lined up for the Flash Forward strand, among them Stephanie Ahn's Bedford Park and La Bola Negra, directed by the duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi.
Homegrown productions drove a box-office turnaround in Korea that took hold during the Lunar New Year period in February, with titles such as the period drama The Kings Warden, Yeon Sang-ho's Colony, Na Hong-jin's Hope, and the horror release Salmokji: Whispering Water drawing audiences back to local theatres. Box-office returns for Hur Jin-ho's political thriller — which debuted on the Toronto International Film Festival circuit before opening to Korean audiences during the Chuseok holiday period — have climbed to just under $18 million, with the film carrying the title The Assassin(s).
Objections from conservative commentators over the production's portrayal of historical events led to a dispute that ended with the film pulling out of its scheduled appearance at BIFF. A statement of backing for the film came from the Directors Guild of Korea.
Jung acknowledged that Korean audiences were returning to physical cinemas, while also pointing out that ticket sales were up on the previous year — a pattern he described as pointing toward recovery — though he added that lower-budget productions continued to face a double bind of limited financing options and restricted access to theatrical distribution. A spokesperson noted that policy in this area has grown more active, though a fuller picture of its impact will take time to develop. The Busan International Film Festival runs 6–15 October at Busan Cinema Centre and other venues throughout the city. Scheduled to run from 10 to 13 October, the Asian Contents & Film Market — ACFM — serves as the festival's dedicated industry platform.
