We present the movies that will open and close activities at the 22nd Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) that will take place from October 12th – 21th in Busan, South Korea.

The organizers of the BIFF announced that Glass Garden by Shin Suwon (South Korea) will open the festival and Love Education by Sylvia Chang (Taiwan/China) will close activities.

Opening Film

Glass Garden by Shin Suwon – South Korea | 2017 – 117 min.
Starring: Geunyoung Moon, Taehun Kim, Taiwha Suh

There′s a woman who resembles a plant. She takes pains to hide her disabled leg and silently focuses on her work. But the world does not leave her alone. Hurt and abandoned, she takes refuge in the forest, in a place only she knows about. In Glass Garden, director Shin Suwon’s unique vision captures the dense vine-like web of a woman’s love and pain in a world suspended between imagination and reality. It is also a gut-wrenching story of revenge dealt out by a woman who must live as a plant in a world dominated by animalistic desires. Moon Keun-young returns to the screen after a long hiatus to play Jae-yeon, this plant-like woman. Jae-yeon works in a biotechnology lab, and is in love with her lab colleague, a professor. Her happiness is short lived, however, when her lover leaves her for someone else in the lab. Meanwhile, Ji-hoon, an unpublished novelist watches Jae-yeon from afar. After accusing a senior writer of plagiarism, he is ostracized from the literary world. Fascinated with Jae-yeon, he follows her to her hiding place in the forest in hopes of using her story in his next novel. And there he makes a shocking discovery. (BIFF Catalogue 2017)

Schedule:
October 12th – Busan Cinema Center BIFF Theater – 18:00 pm
October 13th – Busan Cinema Center Haneulyeon Theater – 15:30 pm
October 16th – CGV Centum City 7 – 13:00 pm
October 18th – Busan Cinema Center 1 – 13:30 pm

Trailer:

Closing Film

Love Education by Sylvia Chang – China, Taiwan | 2017 – 120 min.
Starring: Sylvia Chang, Yue-Ting Lang, Zhuang Zhuang Tian, Ning-Feng Song, Estelle Wu

A dying old lady reminisces about her happier moments. Her daughter, Hui Ying, decides to move her father’s grave from his hometown to beside her mother’s grave. However, his first wife, who has looked after the grave for years, doesn’t approve, and their disagreement ends up becoming a problem for the whole town. Hui Ying’s daughter, Weiwei, works at a broadcasting company. After showing a video clip of a scuffle between her mother and stepgrandmother to her colleagues, it becomes local news, and much gossip ensues. Superbly portraying diverse consequences and delicate sentiments in a metaphor for modern Chinese history, Love Educationfollows three women of different eras. Hui Ying, the core character, representing those who experienced the industrialization of the 1980-90s evokes deep sympathy from Asian viewers with similar experiences: being unable to resolve differences with their parents’ generation and communicate with their children’s generation. The music is remarkable, especially in the scene with a couple having a conversation set to the song “Huafang Guniang”, by legendary Chinese rock singer Cui Jian (Choi Geon to Koreans) on the radio in the background. With profound resonance, this stirs nostalgic sentiments for the ’90s, which must be special to Chinese viewers. (BIFF Catalogue 2017)

Schedule:
October 21st – Busan Cinema Center BIFF Theater

Trailer (No English Subtitles):