Malaysian director Chui Mui Tan's debut film "Love Will Conquer All" and Chinese director Yang Heng's "Betelnut" won the New Currents award yesterday, the top prize in the sole competition section of the 11th Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF).
Only open to debut and second films by Asian filmmakers, the competition was joined this year by 10 films for an award of $30,000.
The festival's organizing committee also announced the winners of various other awards during a news conference held in the morning at the PIFF Pavilion Conference Room in Haeundae, Pusan, ahead of the closing ceremony at 7 p.m. at the Yatching Center in Haeundae.
Tan also won the FIPRESCI prize, given out by an organization of international film critics for her debut film, and South Korean director Noh Kyeong-tae's "The Last Dining Table" won the NETPAC (Network for Promotion of Asian Cinema) award. The Sunje Award, with cash prizes of 20 million won for Korean documentary filmmakers in the Wide Angle section, went to Lee Jin-woo for "The Wind Stirs" and Yoon Seong-ho for "Portfolio".
The New Currents award and some other awards were given at the closing ceremony, which was followed by the screening of "Crazy Stone" by Chinese director Ning Hao.
Overall, the festival's organizing committee judged that the nine-day event went over well with successful launches of new projects to begin another decade after the festival celebrated its 10th anniversary last year.
"It was the first year to prepare for the next decade, and we have achieved what we expected", Kim Dong-ho, festival director of PIFF, said yesterday at the conference.
Kim expressed his confidence especially in the inaugural Asian Film Market, the festival's most ambitious project.
"In three or four years, people will not need to go to other established festivals, including the American Film Market and Cannes, to buy and sell Asian films", Kim said.
The festival screened a total of 245 films from 63 countries with 64 films making their world premieres, and Kim planned to invite a similar number of movies next year, but with more world premieres.
The festival had 162,800 audience members with an average seat occupation rate of 71 percent. To cover the biggest film event in Asia, 1,577 journalists including 434 from abroad visited the nation's biggest port city from Oct. 12-20.
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