ANNOUNCEMENTS

Spotlight on Korean Film News

The Korean Film Council (KOFIC) has announced six Korean films as candidates for South Korea's official entry in the Best International Feature Film category at the upcoming Academy Awards. A committee of experts will now select the single official entry to represent South Korea.

The six candidate films are:

Colony — dir. Yeon Sangho

Salmokji — dir. Lee Sangmin

Possible Love — dir. Lee Changdong

Hope — dir. Im Hongjin

Project Y — dir. Lee Hwan

Mr. Kim Goes to the Cinema — dir. Kim Dongho

We warmly congratulate all six excellent films. We are especially pleased to shine a light on two films that are particularly close to our hearts and to the mission of MAiFF:

Mr. Kim Goes to the Cinema (dir. Kim Dong-ho) had its North American premiere in the KFFC section of our 13th MAiFF this year. The film takes the viewer on a journey of cinemas, following Director Kim as he visits theaters across Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and greater Asia. Along the way, he interviews a roster of renowned directors and actors about the struggles traditional cinemas face in the era of OTT services and home entertainment. We chose this film because it asks a fundamental question:

What is cinema to you?

The film traces the process of disappearance, transformation, and reappearance in our tech era, while transmitting how Korean and Asian film professionals honored Director Kim's lifelong devotion to cinema—including the birth of BIFF, Asia's leading film festival. As this rare documentary is his third film, Asian filmgoers can immediately feel how the entire Asian film industry and its professionals rallied together organically to support Director Kim in realizing this project as he approaches ninety years of age. While a prominent lineup of directors and actors appear enthusiastically for interviews, we also learn that crucial production and post-production support arrived late in the making process. It beautifully delivers to us an ethic of being in cinema, conveying a true care and abundant love within the film and its exploration of what cinema truly is.

Ultimately, the mesmerizing footage and conversations Director Kim captured—taking his steps slowly, one by one, to visit these theaters—was too precious in both voice and image to be contained within 105 minutes. The Korean Film Archive (KOFA) will be preserving his recordings as a treasured archive of Asian cinema in our time.

The second film is Possible Love (dir. Lee Chang-dong). MAiFF has consistently screened all of Lee Chang-dong's films in the past with a profound admiration for the body of his work. In 2023, we co-presented the retrospective "Fearful Symmetry: The Films of Lee Chang-dong" in partnership with The Cinematheque, Vancouver. His cinema is woven into the very identity of MAiFF.

We hope these films will shine on their way to the Academy in 2027! Once again, our heartfelt congratulations to all six films.