JEONJU IFF Reveals Full Lineup for 2021 Edition!

? 186 films from 48 countries will be featured, with 10 titles by new filmmakers for International Competition.

? Compared to 2020, more (141 this year) films will participate in online screening.

? Significant and continued increase in outstanding female directors is reflected in the competition and full lineup.

Under the slogan “Film Goes On,” the 22nd JEONJU International Film Festival (JEONJU IFF, Festival Director Lee Joondong) organizers announced its full lineup at a press conference on April 6, 2021. The press conference was held at the JEONJU Digital Independent Cinema and was streamed on Zoom. Kim Seung-su, the director of the organizing committee and Jeonju Mayor, festival director Lee Joondong and programmers Chun Jinsu, Moon Seok, and Sung Moon spoke at the conference.

The conference started with unveiling the full lineup for this year. The full lineup was announced via a YouTube video posted on the official YouTube channel. Remarks by the directors followed. After that, the programmers and actor Moon Choi talked about sections of the festival, introducing titles to be featured in each section. Special sections for this year’s edition include “Special Focus: Corona, New Normal” and “Special Focus: I am Independent.”

A hybrid online and off-line press conference took place with a Q&A session followed. Director Kim Seung-su mentioned that the organizing committee is proud of successfully hosting the last year’s JEONJU IFF, which went largely online to cope with COVID-19. He added that JEONJU IFF will make sure to find creative, alternative, and safe ways to host the festival to ensure safety and public health.

At JEONJU IFF this year, 186 films from 48 countries will be screened. Among them, 77 are Korean titles and 109 are international titles. Following last year, some of the titles will be screened online as well. 141 movies?79 international and 62 Korean titles?will be screened through the online platform wavve.

Details of their major section, International Competition was unveiled at the conference. JEONJU IFF’s International Competition section focuses on new and emerging directors all over the world, introducing their first or second feature-length films. This year, ten titles were selected to compete. They include Moroccan title FINAL ROUND about the life of a refugee from Africa, BROKEN KEYS telling a story about an aspiring pianist who never gives up his dream even in a Syrian city occupied by ISIS, All Light, Everywhere exploring the influence of technology in establishing human perception and viewpoints, Friends and Strangers, an Australian surreal comedy, The Calm After the Storm following the filmmaker’s father, who is a renowned Colombian filmmaker, Spinsters revisiting and reexamining the explosion of a munitions plant that happened two decades ago, The Goldfish:Dreaming of the Sea about a girl living in a foster family learning about what family means from taking care of a little girl who is new to the foster family, STOP-ZEMLIA following a shy high school girl Masha and her friends’ turbulent adolescence, Landscapes of Resistance tracing the life of Sonja, one of the first female partisans of Yugoslavia during World War II, and finally, and Ste. Anne, an experimental film about the destruction and rejoining of a family in Metis Nation of Ontario, Canada.

Programmer Chun Jinsu mentioned this year’s lineup reflects the tendency that women have been making strides in filmmaking all over the world. He said that the committee is excited to recognize and celebrate films by young, ambitious, and innovative filmmakers at JEONJU IFF.

The 22nd JEONJU International Film Festival will be held from April 29 to May 8, physically on Jeonju Film Street and virtually at wavve (https://www.wavve.com/) and the official YouTube channel of JEONJU IFF (https://www.youtube.com/user/jiffmedia).

* The complete lineup for on-off line screening is also available online at

https://bit.ly/3wyW5id

* Festival lineup announcement video is available online at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdeGOvBJEzQ