Busan closed with Majid Majidi's Midday Meal as best film.
Majid Majidi's Midday Meal won best film at Busan, and Ibuku took the jury prize. BIFF is calling the win an Oscar path. The Academy's key dates still say September 30, and the submissions site still says October 22.
Mina Park
Busan's best-film prize went to Majid Majidi's Midday Meal.
Zhang Yimou, who chaired the jury, called it an ideal film. All seven jurors agreed.
The English program uses that title. The Korean program calls it 빵과 책, bread and book.
Mohammad Rahimi plays Solan, the only teacher in a dry village. When the person paying for school lunch dies, most of the students will stop coming if the meals stop.
He starts smuggling oil at night to keep the school open. His mother stays with him.
Majidi directed Children of Heaven (1997), the first Iranian film nominated for the Oscar now called best international feature. This was his first visit to Korea.
On stage he said his mother, who died a few months before the shoot, is the hero of this film. He dedicated the prize to Iranians he said are still resisting oppression, and he said he hopes for a world without war.
The prize is 50 million won, about $37,000, split between the director and the producer.
BIFF says that prize can now be submitted for best international feature without the country's committee. Iran already sent a different movie, Babak Khajehpasha's The Land of Angels.
Midday Meal had its world premiere in Busan this month. The Academy's key-dates page still lists September 30 as the deadline for the category.
Its submissions site, as of October 15, still shows the category open through October 22.
The special jury prize went to Ibuku, Eddie Cahyono's film with Christine Hakim. The jury's note says she is the heart of it.
On stage he said he and Hakim had promised each other this film eleven years ago.
Lee Yun Chan won best director for To Be Ordinary, a family story about a young man paralyzed after a crash. Her first feature, The Shoe Fairy, played Busan's New Currents section in 2005.
The acting prize goes to two people. Zhou Xun, the Chinese actor, won for The First Taste of Loneliness, Gu You's film about three generations of women after a father dies.
Himeno Kashun, 16, won for her first film, the Japanese director Shuichi Okita's Satoko Always. She plays a fifteen-year-old who starts to write.
Im Si-wan, the Korean actor, hosted. The festival counted 200,043 filmgoers, the most since 2015.
Michelle Yeoh opened the festival with Asian Filmmaker of the Year.
Our read: the movie to stay with is the teacher keeping lunch on the table, and Ibuku next to it. The Oscar headline is ahead of the dates the Academy has published.
