Nominations for Best New Director
A total of five people have been nominated in the category of Best New Director, which is open to directors shooting their feature debut. This was a highly competitive category, with many different directors receiving votes from our selection committee.
Koala Koala is a modest but surprisingly engaging story of three young people who are struggling to launch a hamburger store in Seoul. Recommended for general audiences, but also for business professors to screen for their students! Director Kim Joo-hwan works for the distribution company Showbox, but he took off time from work to shoot this, his debut feature.
Ingtoogi: The Battle of Internet Trolls Ingtoogi: The Battle of Internet Trolls is the story of two online rivals who take their rivalry into the offline world. The film was produced by the Korean Academy of Film Arts and directed by recent graduate Um Tae-hwa.
Fatal Lee Don-ku's Fatal, about a man haunted by a crime from his past, premiered at the 2012 Busan International Film Festival. After traveling the film festival circuit it opened in theaters in August 2013. Lee worked for a number of years as an actor before making this debut feature on a microscopic budget of 3 million won ($3000).
Cheer Up, Mr. Lee Lee Byung-hun (no relation to the famous actor) made his directing debut with this documentary about a struggling film director. The witty and sarcastic film captures some of the difficulties facing young directors in the Korean film industry.
Jeju Prayer A visually striking and somewhat experimental documentary that captures many images of contemporary Jeju Island as well as recording testimony from elderly residents who lived through the 4.3 Jeju Uprising of 1948. Director Im Heung-soon has been active for many years as a visual artist, and shot several documentary shorts before making Jeju Prayer.
Nominations for Best Cinematography
We are pleased to announce nominations in the category of Best Cinematography. A total of three films have been nominated:
Jiseul Jiseul impressed many viewers with its strikingly composed black-and-white visuals. Surprisingly, it is the feature debut of cinematographer Yang Jeong-hoon, who says that he planned out each shot on location together with director O Muel without the aid of a continuity. Yang subsequently went on to shoot director Seo Ho-bin's film Mot, which premiered at the 2013 Busan International Film Festival.
Pluto Over the past decade Yoon Ji-woon has worked closely with director LeeSong Hee-il, having shot No Regret (2006), Break Away (2009), and White Night as well as several of LeeSong's medium-length works. With Pluto, his first collaboration with director Shin Su-won, he imparted a unique visual quality to the claustrophobic setting of a highly competitive Korean high school.
The Russian Novel To date Choi Yong-jin has worked almost exclusively with director Shin Yeon-shick, on the feature films A Great Actor (2005), The Fair Love (2009), and most recently on Rough Play (2013). In The Russian Novel, a film which is divided into two major sections, Choi employs highly contrasting visual styles to draw a distinction between time periods.