The 29th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN, Executive Chairman Shin Cheol) announced on the 31st that the open call for domestic and foreign feature and short films will begin at midnight on January 1, 2025. The submission deadline is midnight (24:00) on April 7th for short films and midnight (24:00) on April 15th for feature films.
Entries must be produced after January 1, 2024. The running time is less than 50 minutes for short films and more than 50 minutes for long films. It must be a previously unreleased film in Korea and is open to all works, including horror, thriller, fantasy, science fiction, noir, comedy, (fake) documentary, romance, coming-of-age film, family film, as well as hybrid and experimental films that cannot be defined by genre. BIFAN said, “We look forward to original works with provocative themes and new styles.”
Entry application documents can be downloaded from the BIFAN online entry site. For inquiries, please contact the program team by phone or email. Short-length selections will be announced on the BIFAN website in May, and feature-length selections will be notified individually in May.
Selected domestic and foreign works will be officially screened through sections such as △Bucheon Choice △Korean Fantastic △Mad Max △Adrenaline Ride △Metal Noir △Merry Go Round △Family in the Other World △Strange Homage △X-Large △Special Exhibition/Retrospective. Prize money and trophies will be awarded to winners in 17 categories. Selected by the BIFAN program selection committee.
Meanwhile, the 28th BIFAN, held in 2024, became the first Korean international film festival to establish an international competition category for AI films, and presented new future solutions for the film industry through the ‘BIFAN+ AI Film Making Workshop’ and the ‘BIFAN+ AI International Conference’. there is. Over 11 days, 262 films from 49 countries were screened in 15 theaters in 8 theaters and an online theater (Wavve), proving that audience interest in BIFAN was also strong. The theater seat occupancy rate was 75.0%, an increase of 14.7 percentage points compared to the 27th episode’s 60.3%, and the number of audiences was 69,238, a 3.0% increase from the 27th episode’s 67,213.
Economy Queen Reporter Kim Kyeong-eun
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