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A Netflix period war drama produced by South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook opened Asia’s largest film festival on Wednesday, the first time a streaming title has kicked off the event.

Directed by Kim Sang-man and featuring Korean megastar Gang Dong-won in a lead role, Uprising is one of 224 official entries at this year’s Busan International Film Festival (Biff), which runs until Oct 11.

The film has attracted significant attention ahead of its world premiere thanks largely to the involvement of Park, best-known for ultra-violent thrillers like 2003’s Old Boy, which played a key role in bringing South Korean cinema to the global forefront.

Park was a screenwriter and producer on Uprising, a story set during Korea’s Joseon Dynasty about two friends who grow up together — but become enemies when war breaks out in the country. “I believed it was a work that could appeal to the public [the most] among all the [Biff] opening films in history,” Park Do-shin, the festival’s acting director, has said of the choice.

Streaming-only content like Netflix’s Squid Game and the Apple TV+ series Pachinko have contributed to a significant surge in the global visibility of Korean and Korean diaspora stories in recent years.

Busan’s 2024 line-up reflects how that content has become an “important part of our culture,” Biff programmer Jung Han-seok said.

Unveiled to the press prior to the opening ceremony, Uprising was a war flick that occasionally leans into the realm of gore, while exploring whether human bonds can truly transcend class and division. According to organisers, around 4,500 guests attended the opening ceremony at the Busan Cinema Centre where stars like Lee Jung-jae, Gang Dong-won, Song Joong-ki, and Kim Min-ha were greeted by fans as they walked the red carpet.

Why streaming?

The decision to open this year’s edition with a major streaming title has sparked criticism within South Korea’s cinema community, as Biff has long been dedicated to supporting emerging talents in Asia as well as small-scale, independent films.

“I find it disappointing that a streaming title was selected as the opening film,” Kay Heeyoung Kim, who owns film studio K-Dragon, said. “The challenges confronting the theatre-based physical film market and filmmakers can be partly attributed to the streaming platforms.”

Other critics contend that streaming content diminishes the cinematic experience that is best enjoyed on the big screen in theaters. But Uprising director Kim said: “We need to examine such controversy.”

“Shouldn’t we consider whether a film must always adhere to specific screening conditions?” he told reporters at a press conference ahead of the opening ceremony.

This year’s edition also comes as organisers grapple with the fallout from former festival director Huh Moon-yung, who resigned last year amid accusations of sexual misconduct. The director position remains vacant.

The South Korean government’s budget for supporting film festivals including Biff was also slashed by half this year. Despite those setbacks, the 29th edition is presenting about 15 more films than last year, organisers said, with 86 world premieres.

Award winners

Biff will posthumously honour South Korean actor Lee Sun-kyun, screening six of the actor’s film and television works, including Parasite, Our Sunhi (2013) and a portion of the TV series My Mister (2018).

Best known globally for his starring role in Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 Oscar-winner Parasite, Lee was found dead in an apparent suicide last year after a two-month investigation into suspected drug use, sparking public outrage over what many perceived as an excessive police interrogation.

Meanwhile, filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa, best known for his contributions to the Japanese horror genre, will receive the festival’s Asian Filmmaker of the Year award. The Japanese filmmaker is showcasing two new films at Biff this year: the violent thriller Cloud and Serpent’s Path, a French-lang­u­age remake of his 1998 film of the same name.

Biff also awarded its first Camellia Award along with the French fashion house Chanel, which was created to honour women in the cinema industry, to acclaimed South Korean production designer Ryu Seong-hie. “When I first started my career, there weren’t many female production designers, and genre films were considered a male domain,” Ryu said after receiving the prize. “I wanted to prove that genre films made by women can also be creative, intense, rough and terrifying.”

Biff’s industry platform, the Asian Contents and Film Market, will host a conference focused on the integration of AI in content production — a current hot-button issue in Hollywood.

Originially published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2024