'Fighter' and 'Jongchakyeok' Invited to Berlin International Film Festival

Already Praised Last Year at Busan International Film Festival... Screening in the Generation Section

Director Yoon Jae-ho's 'Fighter' and directors Kwon Min-pyo and Seo Han-sol's 'Terminal' will be screened at the Berlin International Film Festival, which opens on the 1st of next month. The Berlin Film Festival Secretariat announced on the 8th (local time) that the two works have been invited to the Generation section. The Generation section introduces films for children and adolescents. It is divided into K-plus, suitable for all ages, and 14-plus, for viewers aged 14 and above.

'Fighter' will be shown in the 14-plus screening. It is a drama depicting the turbulent life of Jin-ah, a North Korean defector, living in South Korea. The film closely and breathlessly captures her journey from working as a cleaner at a boxing gym to stepping into the ring. At last year's Busan International Film Festival, it received high praise for its reflection on characters and aesthetic attempts, winning the NETPAC Award (Asia Pacific Film Promotion Award) and the Actor of the Year Award (Im Sung-mi). The Berlin Film Festival described it as "sensitively portraying the harsh world centered on a North Korean woman facing a new environment."

Director Yoon Jae-ho is a filmmaker who has been recognized at major international film festivals. His omnibus short film 'Pig' (2013) was invited to the Cannes International Film Festival and Busan International Film Festival, and his feature-length documentary 'Madam B' (2016) won awards at the Moscow International Film Festival and Zurich Film Festival. The short film 'Hitchhiker' (2016) was selected for the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes, and his first feature film 'Beautiful Days' was chosen as the opening film of the 2018 Busan Film Festival. This new film also features a North Korean defector as the protagonist, like 'Madam B' and 'Beautiful Days.' Director Yoon said, "I think about what message I want to convey and create an exterior that can better deliver it."

'Terminal,' screened in the K-plus section, is the graduation work of directors Kwon Min-pyo and Seo Han-sol, classmates at Dankook University's Graduate School of Film Content. The story follows four girls, classmates in the first year of middle school, who head to Sinchang Station, the terminus of Line 1 subway, to complete their vacation homework of taking photos on the theme of 'the end of the world.' Within this lively travelogue, it captures the profound unknowns of life. It was screened at last year's Busan International Film Festival and was praised for "not exaggerating but capturing depth and breadth through trivial and peripheral things." The Berlin Film Festival praised it as "compressing childhood through teenage years into poetic moments."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.