The 21st Busan International Film Festival will show a total of 299 movies from 69 countries, and among them 122 films will premiere at the event, its organizers said Sunday.

The annual festival, which will open Thursday and run through Oct. 15, will show a wide variety of films ranging from critically acclaimed films to experimental movies and those made by female directors.

Under the World Cinema section, numerous award-wining films from the 2016 Cannes Film Festival will be featured. Among those are I, Daniel Blake by Ken Loach, It’s Only the End of the World by Xavier Dolan and Personal Shopper by Olivier Assayas.

A Window on Asian Cinema section also boasts a variety of films that have been highly acclaimed in Cannes. The list includes Ma‘ Rosa by Brillante Mendoza and The Salesman by Asghar Farhadi.

Korean-Chinese Zhang Lu’s A Quiet Dream will be screened as the opening movie. It is about a young Korean woman named Ye-ri who runs a bar and takes care of her paralyzed father. The Dark Wind by Hussein Hassan will be the closing movie.

For the Gala Presentation, four movies — Bleed for This by Ben Younger, Daguerrotype by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Rage by Lee Sang-il, and Your Name by Makoto Shinkai — wait to meet cinemagoers in the southern port city of Busan.

Those who look for some experimental Korean movies should check out the following films: The Table by Kim Jong-kwan, Picture of Hell by Park Ki-yong and Jane By Cho Hyun-hoon.

Female directors’ works such as Desperate Sunflowers by Hitomi Kuroki and The Long Excuse by Miwa Nishikawa will also be screened.

Desperate Sunflowers is a directorial debut film by a well-known Japanese actress who starred in, most famously, Paradise Lost in 1997.

For those who consider themselves to be avid, patient film fans, try A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery by Lav Diaz. The running time is 480 minutes. (Yonhap)

(Source: http://www.koreaherald.com)