The 28th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival

The most worthwhile film festivals deliver bold swings on the full array of the seventh art’s offerings. From small-scale contained indie flicks to strange genre experimentations and mega-international auteurist blockbusters, great festival programming — in my opinion — offers up something that the suburban North American multiplex can’t: meaningful artistic variety. The risk comes at a cost. The worst films one can ever dread seeing can be found at international film festivals. Even some of the films written about in this report are deeply flawed. But they generate strong reactions. That’s what excellent film festivals, like the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, are capable of.

The 28th BIFAN took place from July 4th through July 14 and featured 253 films from 49 countries. The breakdown includes 112 features (this critic’s focus), 97 Shorts, 15 AI Films, and 29 XR works — the latter two being a sign of both the festival’s populist leanings and willingness to poke the cinematic establishment. According to the festival’s website, “The 28th BIFAN rebrands itself by expanding the scope of the festival. 'BIFAN+' is a new brand that integrates the newly launched AI section, the current industry program B.I.G, the XR content project Beyond Reality, and the IP development project Goedam Campus.” The changes included a “hackathon-style AI workshop,” a conference on AI film production, and Korea’s first international competitive AI film section. The AI selection didn’t inspire this viewer and felt more gimmicky than formally innovative, hence my aversion to reviewing titles from the category. The opening and closing films — Love Lies Bleeding and Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In —  show another of the festival’s strengths as being in the in-between space of Hollywood hegemony and the powerful East Asian production centers.

BIFAN’s embrace of sexuality is one example of its willingness to reach for something extra. They even had a retrospective category named Celluloid Erotica: Anatomy of Sexploitation Cinema. “The eight films offer an interesting insight into the various dialogues and negotiations that different eras and societies have had with sex on film, from conservative sex education and political modernism to the sexual revolution and hardcore pornography,” according to the website. Outside of the category, films like the stress-galvanizing American serial killer flick Strange Darling and the Norwegian animated film Spermageddon also don’t shy away from topics between the sheets. I’d be hesitant to not call sex and desire among the festival’s major themes even if they do not take center focus in most of the films in this report.

Continue reading at Offscreen.com for reviews of Strange Darling, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, You Will Die In Six Hours, Doombung: The Puddle, Base Station, and The Unrighteous.