Florence Korea Film Fest Winners

Festival Cinema Award
Hwang Jung-min

The Festival celebrated actor Hwang Jung-min with the Florence Korea Film Fest Award. An award joyfully delivered to a long-awaited guest who generously shared with the public the most significant moments of his career divided between cinema and theater.

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Festival Cinema Award
Na Hong-jin

A cult director who, on the eve of the release of his latest film, was a guest of the Festival with a retrospective on his work and a Masterclass in which he shared his reflections on cinema with the public. Na Hong-jin was also awarded the Florence Korea Film Fest Award.

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Festival Jury Award
Nam Dong-hyub – Handsome Guys

It is a film that under the patina of splatter and parody, launches an important message, especially today, and that is not to stop at appearances, because sometimes the monster is not the strange or the different that we meet on the side of the road, but it is someone who is in our social group. Same as us. All this, combined with the excellent interpretation of the protagonists, and a script with a great rhythm makes Handsome Guys an absolutely unmissable film.

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Festival Audience Award
Woo Min-ho – Harbin

The audience of the Florence Korea Film Fest decreed Harbin by director Woo Min-ho the film they most appreciated. A true story of courage and sacrifice interpreted with intensity by an actor of the caliber of Hyun Bin who moved and inspired the viewers.

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Festival Audience Award
Short Shorts! – Ahn Jung-min – Suzuki

Short films have always been appreciated by those audiences who are looking for new ideas and stories. This year the spectators awarded Suzuki, an intimate and delicate story that sees a boy grappling with an event that will change his life forever.

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Festival Cinema Award
MOWG

The Florence Korea Film Fest is thrilled to welcome Mowg, one of the most visionary and influential composers in South Korean cinematography and beyond. With his unique approach to film music, which mixes Korean tradition and electronic experimentation, Mowg has created soundtracks capable of transforming every scene into an intense and memorable experience.

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Lee Byung-hun

Festival Cinema Award
Lee Byung-hun

Cinema has always been part of his life; It is a passion that his father passed on to him, with whom he often spent his days in the cinema devouring western films. He imposes himself as a true Asian star with the languidly melancholic charm of Alain Delon and the physical prowess of Bruce Lee. In 2012 he became one of the first Korean actors to imprint his footprints on the Hollywood walk of Fame.

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Song Kang-ho

Festival Cinema Award
Song Kang-ho

A long-time performer, he is the symbolic face of Korean cinema. Forty films to his credit including Memoirs of a Murderer, Snowpiercer and Parasite directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Jon-ho. A star with unparalleled charisma and strong humanity. His mere presence makes a film a contemporary classic. His interpretation of a director in creative crisis in Cobweb is only the latest in magnitude in a gallery of unforgettable characters.

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KIM JEE-WOON

Festival Cinema Award
Kim Jee-woon

A visionary author and experimenter, he has moved, since the beginning of his career, through genres, churning out films with impeccable formal care and complex and fascinating screenplays. Comedy, horror, gangster movies, action films and westerns his films have been presented in the most important international film festivals. Among the long-standing friends of the Florence Korea fin Fest it is always a pleasure to welcome director Kim and celebrate him with the honor he deserves

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Kim Jee-woon

Festival Jury Award
Kim Jee-woon – Cobweb

For the ability to tell the story of cinema and mix thriller, horror and comedy genres in an innovative way with virtuous time jumps between truth and fiction. For the directorial mastery in the rhythm and irony of the writing, as well as that of the actors’ interpretations, among which that of the protagonist Song Kang-ho stands out. For the extraordinary ability to balance on the thin diaphragm that separates drama from comedy, reality from fiction, leading the viewer to reflect on the continuous confrontation between art and life.

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Lee Han - Honeysweet

Festival Audience Award
Lee Han – Honeysweet

A love comedy starring Choi-ho, a boy who leads a lonely existence, while Il-young is a lonely woman with a teenage daughter, the two meet when he goes to the agency where she works to try to pay off his brother’s debt. They like each other very much, but not everyone supports their union.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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