Busan film festival to open with action thriller from Hong Kong
Xinhua 2012-09-13 08:55 (GMT+8)
Hong Kong actors in a promotional event of their movie ahead of the 2012 Busan Intarnational Film Festival. (Photo/Xinhua)
A Hong Kong crime thriller about a battle of wits between police and gangsters in a violent hostage situation will open at an international film festival in the South Korean port city of Busan next month, the festival's organizers said Monday.
The 17th Busan International Film Festival, considered one of Asia's top film events, will start from Oct. 4-13 with 304 films from 75 countries showing.
The annual festival will present 93 world premieres and 39 international premieres.
The opening film will be Cold War by first-time directors Longman Leung and Sunny Luk. The movie features some biggest stars of Hong Kong, including Aaron Kwok, Tony Leung and Andy Lau.
The festival will close with Television by Bangladeshi director Mostafa Farooki. The film delves into issues such as religious views, the generation gap, tradition and modernization, and family love.
In a departure from previous events that were usually opened or closed with South Korean films, this year's selection was made to highlight the diversity of Asian films, said organizers.
Jury heads of the festival's two competition sections — New Currents and Flash Forward — will be Bela Tarr, a Hungarian filmmaker, and Arturo Ripstein, a Mexican director.
Among the international guests to attend the film event are Chinese actress Tang Wei, who was chosen to be the first foreign host of the festival's opening ceremony, fellow Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi, Japanese actor Kase Ryo and French actress Agnes Jaoui.
The festival will also draw internationally acclaimed directors like Mohsen Makhmalbaf of Iran, Zhang Yang of China, Japan's Wakamatsu Koji and Krzysztof Zanussi of Poland.
Busan mayor Hur Nam-sik, who also serves as chief organizer of the BIFF, appeared confident about the city's preparations for the upcoming festival. "We made efforts to give visitors a glamorous, but comfortably enjoy the festival," he said.
