The 37th Busan International Short Film Festival

Selection criteria for the Korean Competition Section

Upon deliberating the 593 films for 2 months, the 21 pre-selection juries (6 overseas, 15 Korean) of the 37th Busan International Short Film Festival (BISFF) have selected a total of 19 films as finalists. Like for the international competition 

section, this year’s pre-selection for the Korean competition section added another round, for a total of 3 rounds, in an effort to improve accuracy, integrity, and diversity.

The genre distribution of the 593 Korean short films submitted this year was: 82% fiction, 7% documentary, 6% animation, and 5% experimental films. As in the international competition, fiction films account for the highest percentage, with all 

other genres making up about a fifth of all entries. The proportion of fictional Korean short films exceeds that of the international competition, showing once again the Korean trend leaning towards fiction films.

During the selection for the Korean competition section, we were able to see a clear phenomenon at the 20-minute mark in the films’ running times. Overall, films under 20 minutes tend to present a wider range of themes and mise-en-scene

 styles, high-concept story ideas and general inventiveness. Meanwhile, the 20-to-30-minute-long films seem to address similar situations or characters tropes: school bullying, passive-agressive family conflict and reconciliation, inhumane

 situations, gender, immigration, employment. Interesting and compelling topics showing issue awareness but, by reaching for a longer runtime, these films tend to lose the impactful quality of the short film genre and start resembling

 independent feature films - often with a sameness of tone and a more risk-free veneer that can make them hard to differentiate from one another, and less memorable over time. Despite their workmanship and competitiveness, these 20-to-

30-minute-long Korean short films are less susceptible to be selected by festivals abroad specifically because of their running time, which most foreign programmers do find excessive. In order to play at the international level, Korean short

 filmmakers should give further thought into their films’ running time, as well as experimenting more with forms, styles and formats.

The juries of the Korean competition made their judgments according to the unique judging principles of BISFF – “short film-ness” and “issue awareness”. They wanted to find films that are independent and complete, rather than a rough draft

 of a feature film, to bring such works to the public. And they found them – the films that communicate with the world, films that chose the difficult path to be unique rather than familiar.

We send our deepest appreciation to all the filmmakers who have walked the path untraveled, spending restless nights and slaving the days in artistic creation. The juries saw in all submitted films the lonely process of creation, and witnessed

 the questions raised about art and life.

The Pre-selection Jury of the 37th Busan International Short Film Festival

* Korean Competition Finalist 19 Films (Titles in alphabetical order)