The 16th year of the nation’s second-largest film festival kicked off Thursday at Jeonju Sports Stadium.

The outdoor stadium was packed with fans as stars lined the red carpet and opening ceremony cohosts Kim Dong-wan and Im Sung-min took the stage to officially begin the Jeonju International Film Festival. Kim Dong-wan is a member of boy band Shinhwa, while Lim Sung-min is an anchorwoman-turned-actress. 

The stars in attendance included rising Hallyu star Kim Woo-bin, beloved actress and director Moon So-ri, and directors Im Kwon-taek and Lee Byeong-heon.

The ceremony was opened by chairman of the JIFF Steering Committee and Jeonju Mayor Kim Seung-suand featured dance and music performances, with a particularly lively three-song set from Ulala Session.

After the competition jury panel and the opening film were introduced, the ceremony came to a close – but not before comedian Cho Yun-ho came onstage for a surprise skit, posing as delivery man who had brought the wrong film reel.

The opening ceremony was followed up by the Asian premiere of the opening film, “Partisan,” the feature-length debut from Australian director Ariel Kleiman that earned critical acclaim at Sundance. In the film, acclaimed French actor Vincent Cassel plays Gregori, a menacing man who runs a secret society in a hidden compound outside the bounds of a dystopian, mythical city. He is the only man in the society – the other occupants are women with troubled pasts who seek shelter with their children.

At first, the secret society seems like a safe haven, but it is soon revealed that the funds for the society’s survival comes by using the “sheltered” children as paid assassins. At a press conference ahead of the opening ceremony, director Kleiman said that he was inspired to write the film by the story of an actual child assassin ring in Colombia.

“It highlighted in a very simple and powerful way how much power adults have over children and the tragedy of when that power is taken advantage of,” he said. “We decided to strip away the socioeconomic and political factors and tell a story wrapped in the world of a myth.”

The movie’s plot is on the slow side, but it is riveting in its chilling contrast of the gleeful delight of the children’s everyday lives, cast against the horror of what they do when they are running their “errands.”

“We were a bit concerned at first, because we were unsure whether the movie could hold the attention of the 4,000-member opening ceremony audience,” said Kim Young-jin, a programmer at JIFF. “However, we felt it was in the spirit of the Jeonju film festival to highlight events that were happening around the world. The movie is powerful in that it allows the audience to imagine and feel the magnitude of those events.”

The 16th Jeonju International Film Festival runs this year with the theme “Jeonju in Spring” from April 30 to May 9, screening 200 films from 47 countries in various groupings such as the International and Korean Competitions, in addition to highlight sections devoted to the Greek New Wave, director Martin Rejtman, and Wang Bing, among others. For more information, visit www.jiff.or.kr.

By Won Ho-jung (hjwon@heraldcorp.com)