FKFF Winners

Festival Cinema Award
Park Hae-il

What are the most important qualities for an actor? In addition to talent and commitment, physical fitness and a handsome face. Characteristics that can certainly win leading roles in action films or romantic comedies, but risk leaving little room for more complex characters. The possibilities presented to a director by an actor like Park Hae-il, who, in addition to possessing the main qualities, has the gift of a unique face characterized by gentle, boyish features, are truly inspiring.

Starting with an ending, which promises to be a great beginning, Park Hae-il is currently the best-known South Korean actor in the world by being the lead in Park Chan-wook’s latest film, “Decision to Leave.”

Festival Cinema Award
Bong Joon-ho

After a retrospective devoted to him in 2011, Bong Joon-ho returned to the Florence Korea Film Festival for a masterclass where he traced his career from his beginnings to the present day. The meeting addressed the main junctures of his idea of cinema: reflections on the fractures that run through Korean society-from individuals to different social classes-and on the announced ecological disaster are always accompanied by a style that combines the originality of an authorial gaze with a taste for spectacular cinema capable of bringing together different genres. A cinema of heroes fighting “against everything and everyone,” on the chessboard of a world of uncontrollable trajectories.

Festival Jury Award
July Jung – Next Sohee

A gradual, poetic and totalizing immersion inside the mystery of a young life of simple desires; the progressive understanding of a voice hitherto stifled by a system that demands to be there without really existing. With the gentle yet firm step of one who fights for an uncomfortable truth, Next Sohee takes us to the realization that only by stopping to listen there, where hope has been lost, is it possible to start again and, perhaps, change something.

Festival Audience Award
Park Gyu-tae – 6/45

Cheon-Woo is a sergeant in the Korean army. His department is located very close to the DMZ. One day he discovers he has won 5.7 million in the national lottery, but his ticket accidentally ends up beyond the demilitarized zone in North Korea. When under the favor of night Cheon-Woo crosses the DMZ to retrieve his ticket, he meets North Korean soldier Yong-Ho who in turn claims the prize.

Mymovies Online Film Award
Park Dong-hoon – In Our Prime

Ji-woo attends a prestigious private high school but is unable to adapt because of the different social background from his peers. At a time when he most needs help with his studies, he meets Ri Hak-sung, a North Korean mathematician who lives in hiding by acting as a school security guard. Starting with solving complex mathematical problems, the two will find, in each other, a reference point.

Short Film Award
Park Chan-ho – The Autumn Poem

Jong-su, is still not very good at Korean. His classmate Ji-hee, who likes to write poetry, helps him with his homework. Ji-hee will be moving to Seoul very soon, and Jong-su would like to write her a poem.

Festival Cinema Award – Lee Jung-jae

The TV series “Squid Game” marked a revolution in the world of entertainment. The face and together the spirit of this new course is that of Lee Jung-jae. Performer whose career was founded on a rigorous protessionality that led him to choose courageous and nonconformist roles. Starting from fashion to arande cinema. Lee Jung-jae’s is the story of an actor whom audiences have watched mature through a molleoiciaguo that nanno secnate a prolessional and human evolution What will happen from now on in the artistic life of a man who has delivered one of his most important roles to the world is something. For those who passionately follow Korean cinema, to look forward to with confidence and pride

The Mall Festival Jury Award – Shin Su-won Hommage

Ji-wan is a director. One day, she is contacted by the film archive to restore an old film. After realizing that some scenes from the film have been cut, Ji-wan decides to find the clips of the missing scenes. She thus manages to meet old filmmakers who make her see the world and life through their eyes.

Festival Audience Award – Lee Jun-ik The Book of Fish

In 1801 scholar Jeong Yak-jeon was exiled to the island of Heuk-san. Meeting the young fisherman Chang-dae gives rise to his plan to write an encyclopedia collecting all the fish that inhabit the island’s waters. The relationship between the two men will grow stronger and stronger.

Short Film Award – Cho Young-myung 202 201

A neighbor keeps connecting to a girl’s Bluetooth speaker. But who is this person who keeps invading his space?

Festival Cinema Award – Moon So-ri

Moon So-ri was born in Busan in 1974. He made his big screen debut in 1999 in “Peppermint Candy,” the second film directed by Master Lee Chang-dong with whom he also collaborated on the film “Oasis.” Her performance as a young disabled woman in this film earned her the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Rising Actress at the Venice Film Festival.

Online Audience Award – Recalled

Director and screenwriter Seo Yoo-min has co-written such films as “April Snow” (2005) and “The Last Princess” (2016). He made his directorial debut with “Secret” (2021). Recalled is his second film.

Festival Critics Award / Korean Horizons – Fighter

Born in 1980 in Busan he completed his studies in France. In 2010 he shot “Promise,” a documentary about a North Korean woman he met in France for whom he became personally involved in the search for her son who was stranded in China. While traveling on Chinese soil along the North Korean border, the filmmaker discovers the underground world of North Koreans in China through which he made “Looking for North Koreans” (2013), which won awards at numerous festivals. “Mrs. B. A North-Korean Woman” was presented at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.

Festival Critics Award / Independent Korea – A Distant Place

Born in 1984 in Seoul, South Korea. He studied literature in college and film directing, and after several short films won at the Jeonbuk Film Festival with “Silent Boy.” “To My River” is his first feature film.