20 Short Films you shouldn’t miss at the 38th Busan International Short Film Festival (Part 1)

By Asian Film Festival on April 5, 2021 • ( 1 Comment )

These are twenty short films you shouldn’t miss at the 38th Busan International Short Film Festival which will take place from April 21st – 26th (2021) in Busan, Korea.

About the festival:
Founded in 1980, the Busan International Short Film Festival launched with the aim of creating the film-making friendly environment and finding talented film professionals. It has introduced many different kinds of films, including 8mm and independent films made by students and general public. Many young talents in those days are now taking the lead in the Korean cinema. The BISFF has been introducing short films and cultures of the Guest Country. In addition to the competition section, various sections have given audience the chances to see the trend in a short film in the world and to guess its future.

Selected Films:

**Ada** by David Williamson – Belgium | 2021 – 14 minutes
Section: International Competition 4

Ada has to choose. Either admit to a murder she didn’t commit or plead her innocence in front of a jury. (BISFF 2021)

**Al-Sit** by Suzannah Mirghani – Sudan, Qatar | 2020 – 20 minutes
Section: international Competition 8

In a cotton-farming village in Sudan, 15-year-old Nafisa has a crush on Babiker, but her parents have arranged her marriage to Nadir, a young Sudanese businessman living abroad. Nafisa’s grandmother Al-Sit, the powerful village matriarch, has her own plans for Nafisa’s future. But can Nafisa choose for herself? (BISFF 2021)

**Bethlehem 2001** by Ibrahim Handal – Palestine | 2020 – 14 minutes
Section: International Competition 3

A young Palestinian thoughts wander between his current reflections and his childhood memories of the military invasion and siege of Bethlehem. Trying to understand how his parents led him through those difficult times, he hopes that this helps him cope in the present. (BISFF 2021)

Trailer:

**Carnivore** by Amir Hossein Mohseni – Iran | 2021 – 13 minutes
Section: International Competition 4

A man who encounters the body of a drowned person in the marshlands, sends the corpse to the water’s depths. The next day, the man recovers the body while doing his job as a rescue diver and is given a reward for his work. (BISFF 2021)

Trailer:

**Chuj Boys of Summer** by Max Walker-Silverman – USA, Guatemala | 2020 – 17 minutes
Section: International Competition 7

Speaking only his native language, a Guatemalan teenager begins his new life in rural Colorado. (BISFF 2021)

Trailer:

**Conversations at the End of Life** by Fabienne Koch – Switzerland | 2020 – 18 minutes
Section: International Competition 1

How does one stand growing old? What sense does it make to keep living, when you can’t do anything anymore? Three old women answer my burning questions. A widow questions everything, a former dancer shows me what to do when you can’t dance anymore, and a nun explains to me what lies beyond. A personal quest to find out how to deal with the inevitable finiteness of life. (BISFF 2021)

Trailer:

**E14** by Peiman Zekavat – UK | 2020 – 20 minutes
Section: International Competition 3

A study in human behaviour in the densest and most overdeveloped residential area in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a filmmaker captures the events outside his window through the first two weeks of the lockdown and discovers the phenomenon of empty apartments. (BISFF 2021)

**Girls Shouldn’t Walk Alone at Night** by Katerine Martineau – Canada | 2020 – 18 minutes
Section: International Competition 5

After a late night high school graduation party, Chantal and Delphine find themselves walking home alone in the dark. Lost in the forest, their long night walk is punctuated by carelessness and an irrepressible desire to exist. (BISFF 2021)

**La Espera** by Danilo do Carmo, Jakob Krese – Germany, Brazil | 2020 15 minutes
Section: International Competition 9

A remote piece of no man´s land. A dusty, barren area in between the railway line and the highway. A few campfires flaring. Groups of people gathering here and there. Slowly the situation is becoming clear. They are part of the caravan heading towards the US border. Silent images and fragments of touching conversations calmly direct the viewer’s attention to the microcosm of individual destinies within the context of world affairs. What seems so abstract and far away, suddenly becomes close and alive. (BISFF 2021)

Trailer: