Through JEONJU Cinema Project, JEONJU Film Festival becomes a film investor in order to facilitate the production of low-budget features. In 2024, JEONJU Cinema Project had the great news of receiving an award from Berlinale Encounters for two consecutive years: Samsara received a Special Jury Award in 2023 and DIRECT ACTION received the Best Film Award as well as a Special Mention in Documentary competition in 2024. The meaning of such results reaches beyond the awards themselves—they prove that JEONJU Cinema Project has been on the right path and that it serves as a factor that brings the attention of major film festivals and filmmakers to JEONJU International Film Festival. Furthermore, it demonstrates that JEONJU Cinema Project films are acknowledged as one of the best films of the year.
This year, JEONJU Cinema Project showcases DIRECT ACTION, Lucky, Apartment, When Clouds Hide the Shadow, and Nothing in Its Place: 1 documentary and 3 feature films with very distinct topics and approaches from social issues and personal stories to historical events.
Co-directed by Ben RUSSELL and Guillaume CAILLEAU, DIRECT ACTION is a documentary that delicately observes the radical activist community in France that has successfully protested against the expansion of an international airport. It documents the daily lives of the activists as well as their protests and resistance against police suppression.
Lucky, Apartment is the first feature film of KANGYU Garam who has made documentaries for several years. A social drama with a touch of suspense, it depicts how an ordinary event that occurs to a young female couple unfolds into a turning point that shakes their entire lives. The death of a neighbor in the couple’s building causes a rift in the apartment community, and the film realistically exposes the discrimination, misery, and social pressure the community faces as a result. The director does not give up on the beauty of love and solidarity, the only weapons the protagonists have against the world.
Chilean director José Luis TORRES LEIVA releases his new film in Jeonju five years after Death Will Come and Shall Have Your Eyes (2019). When Clouds Hide the Shadow is the story of an actor arriving and preparing for filming in Puerto Williams in southern Chile, located further down than the city known as “the end of the world”. As the weather delays the arrival of the crew, the protagonist Maria meets and spends time with local people while she waits: a plant researcher who devotes himself to small things in the face of vast nature, a young musician who revives the memory of a loved one, and even a spiritual being who alleviates the physical pain that is manifested from pain and longing for an absent being. This film is a story about healing and an intimate time of enduring wounds.
Turkish director Burak ÇEVIK’s new film Nothing in Its Place covers the political violence that occurred in Türkiye in October 1978. The film is based on a historical event in which six young left-wing people, believers in revolution through politics, were attacked and killed while talking in a house by some armed young nationalists. The director uses cinema to reconstruct that shocking event.
The four films introduced by the JEONJU Cinema Project not only raise our pride in terms of excellence but also embody the spirit that the film festival program always pursues: discovering innovative film language and production methods, unafraid to face the challenges of the world and humanity. JEONJU IFF is proud of the successive good news and will continue to endeavor to discover new films like the other three films up for the world premiere.
Programmer Sung MOON
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