Jang Dong-gun’s Good Morning, President to Open PIFF

Director Jang Jin’s latest political comedy starring Jang Dong-gun as Korea’s youngest president-elect will open this year’s Pusan International Film Festival, to be held in the nation’s southeastern port city Oct. 8-16.

Announced during the official PIFF news conference on Tuesday at the Press Center in central Seoul, the selection came as a surprise as last year’s opener, an obscure Kazakh film that fest organizers claimed at the time would symbolize their support of films from emerging film markets from the Southeast and Central Asian region, was a shift in the direction the festival had been steering in recent years.

This year, organizers of Korea’s biggest film festival have switched their focus to domestic films buoyed by the recent success of such local blockbusters like “Haeundae” and “Take-Off.”

“The Korean film industry, which have been in a bit of a rut has been clawing its way back to relevance and we wanted to keep the upbeat mood in the industry by choosing a domestic film to open this year’s festival,” said PIFF program director Lee Sang-yong.

“Director Jang Jin’s film is full of humor and covers a wide spectrum of issues that concern Korean society today as well as themes that people of all generations can relate to. There really was no other selection more appropriate than his film.”

He further added that Jang Dong-gun - hugely popular throughout all of Asia - would be actively participating in the promotion of the film at the festival.

“Jang Dong-gun will not only attend the premiere but he will also make appearances at various gala events and we will try hard to bring him closer to visiting fans at this year’s festival.”

To address widespread concerns over the H1N1 virus, organizers said infrared equipment able to detect abnormal body temperatures in guests will be installed at theater entrances. They said they would share disinfecting handy wipes to festival participants.

“We are pouring all of our resources into preventing a potential outbreak so visitors can be assured and can come to the festival without any worries,” said PIFF Chairman Kim Dong-ho.

Organizers expect more than 200,000 visitors to the festival, one of the largest in Asia, which will be held at six major theaters and art houses in Busan.

The list of VIPs to the festival include include Bryan Singer who produced the “X-Men” series, Italian director Dario Argento and Josh Hartnett among many others.

Hartnett, the Hollywood star of “Black Hawk Down” (2001), is making his visit at the invitation of Korean actor Lee Byung-hun according to organizers. The two, along with Japanese actor Takuya Kimura, starred in “I Come With the Rain,” directed by French director of Vietnamese ancestry Anh Hung Tran. The movie is one of this year’s entries in PIFF’s only competition New Current Award.

This year’s festival will screen 355 films from 70 countries - the largest ever recorded in the festival’s history. Of them, about 100 of them are premieres.

The festival will also hold a retrospective on late Korean actress Jang Jin-young, who died on Sept. 1 of stomach cancer, playing three of her representative works.

Closing the event will be “The Message,” a much anticipated film about communists fighting against Japanese invaders.

Tickets start selling Sept. 21. For more information, log onto http://www.piff.org

Credit: Korea Herald

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