Seoul Independent Film Festival to kick off in December

The Seoul Independent Film Festival will be held from Dec. 1 to Dec. 9 at CGV Art House Apgujeong in Seoul, its organizer announced on Wednesday.

“This year is our 48th festival. The Seoul Independent Film Festival has a history of providing an opportunity for audiences to meet with young directors, actors and different creators. I hope that (the audiences) are excited about it,” the festival’s director Kim Dong-hyun said at the beginning of a press conference held at the Chungmu Art Center in central Seoul on Wednesday.

Kim went on to explain that a total of 1,574 films were submitted for this year’s festival, and 127 movies were carefully selected to be screened this year.

“We say this every year, but it marked the highest number of submitted films,” Kim said. “We see that this proves how passion for filmmaking is continuing, despite going through three years of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

A total of 94 million won ($68,000) will be given in prize money this year, which increased from 84 million won last year, according to the organizer.

Kim also introduced this year’s slogan: "The Art of Love."

“So far, our festival has preferred declarative slogans,” Kim said. “During our roundtable meeting, one of the organizers said that what we need now is 'the Art of Love.’ We unanimously agreed that now is the time when we need a beautiful slogan like this to comfort us.”

The opener for this year’s festival is “Again the Wind Blows,” co-directed by Kim Tae-il and Ju Ro-mi.

The film is part of the two directors’ series “The People’s World History.” Not only does the movie sum up their previous series, including “No Name Stars” (2010), “Wellang Trei” (2012) and “All Live, Olive” (2016), it also tells their own story -- of a production team that consists of family members.

There is also a section to introduce foreign independent films during the film festival.

This year, eight films by Taiwanese directors including “Pinoy Sunday” directed by Ho Wi-ding will be screened to the audiences, according to the organizer.

The “Local Cinema” section, which aims to shed light on films created in different Korean cities, was also newly created this year.

The festival’s iconic “Actors Project” contest, which began in 2018, will also continue to be held. Actors are evaluated based on a 60-second live monologue performance with one grand prize winner receiving a plaque and 2 million won. There are two second and third place winners who receive 1 million won and 500,000 won, respectively. Two Director's Choice prizes worth 1 million won each are also given out.

Established as the Korean Youth Film Festival in 1975, the annual film festival changed its name to the current SIFF in 2002.