This year marks the ninth edition of Community BIFF and the sixth edition of BIFF Everywhere. Since 2018, we have worked to give these programs a distinct presence of their own—but I often wonder just how many people really know about them. That was why I introduced the programs last year through a series of Korean keywords beginning with the consonant “ㅊ”.

This year, I’d like to pick five letters that appear in the names Community BIFF and BIFF Everywhere—C, O, M, U, and Y—and use them as keywords to continue introducing the programs.

Coincidence plays a surprisingly large part in the film selections for Community BIFF and BIFF Everywhere. Community BIFF presents 69 films indoors and three films outdoors, while BIFF Everywhere features 28 films, bringing this year’s total to exactly 100. It almost looks deliberate, doesn’t it?

There are more coincidences. Films involving brothers stand out in particular this year. We will screen three early short films by director Um Tae-hwa and his brother, actor Um Tae-goo, as well as the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) and Fargo (1996).

Master Talk brings another brotherly coincidence. Ryoo Seungwan’s The City of Violence (2006) is “a panorama of references to Eastern and Western action genres, containing everything that makes Ryoo Seungwan who he is.” Actor Ryoo Seung-bum, who has appeared in seven of his brother’s fourteen feature films, is notably absent from this one. But don’t worry—you can still find him in Yim Soon-rye’s Waikiki Brothers (2001). Both films have distinctive styles of their own, with the clash between dreams and reality and a deep sense of longing leaving a powerful and lasting impression.

This year marks 30 years since Yim Soon-rye’s feature debut and 30 years since Ryoo Seungwan’s short-film debut. At this point, perhaps these coincidences were born of a kind of “desperate longing” after all.

In this meaningful year, we present special anniversary screenings of two memorable films previously screened at BIFF—Waikiki Brothers for its 25th anniversary and The City of Violence for its 20th. With the director providing live commentary and audience members exchanging written reactions in the chat room as everyone watches together, Master Talk creates a moving sense of collective immersion.

Community BIFF, a festival created together with its audience, invites program proposals through Request Cinema. Over a two-week submission period, 92 proposals were received, 42 of which passed the initial review. Following a public vote and expert review, 18 were ultimately selected.

These proposals offer a snapshot of the interests and trends among today’s festivalgoers. There are plenty of fresh and inventive ideas, including a proposal for a 20th-anniversary screening of 200 Pounds Beauty (2006), featuring Kim A Joong—whose performance of Blondie’s “Maria” became a nationwide hit—with director Byun Young-joo as moderator. The film’s vision of a society where everyone is given the opportunity to fulfill their potential also reflects the direction Community BIFF hopes to take.

Among this year’s selected Audience Programmers are former Community BIFF team members. I feel grateful, encouraged, and proud to see them return. A film festival can feel a little like a reunion, bringing back filmmakers from around the world as well as young people who may one day become outstanding filmmakers and cultural programmers.

Choosing films worth rediscovering and helping them reach wider audiences takes work, but it is meaningful work. There are also other ways to take part as a partner, through BIFF Everywhere, which brings cinema closer to everyday life, or All Day Cinema. At It’s Cinema, audiences watch TAMPOPO (1985) with writer and chef Park Chanil, engaging both the palate and the mind, while a Busan-based architectural design firm with a passion for the humanities provides snacks.

Director Park Chan-wook once joked that the only people capable of combining the “playful” and the “serious” are children and the Ryoo brothers, Seungwan and Seung-bum. For a brief moment, the same spirit comes alive here. At Community BIFF’s BIFF Square and throughout BIFF Everywhere, where screens are set up across the city, open conversation, shared laughter, and cheers of encouragement never seem to stop.

Happy-Go-Lucky Night, the late-night screening program where audiences eat, drink, laugh, and talk until dawn, recreates the raucous gatherings of BIFF’s early days in Nampo-dong that have since become the stuff of legend—newspapers spread out in the alleys, drinks in hand, and everyone gradually swept up in the mood. With drinks and snacks laid out, Teaching Practice: Idiot Girls and School Ghost 2 (2025), Fargo (1996), and My Scary Girl (2006)—hybrid thrillers featuring strong female characters and the razor-sharp humor of directors Kim Min-ha, the Coen brothers, and Son Jae-gon—welcome audiences who stay into the small hours.

There is an especially strong lineup of music films this year. Community BIFF Collection brings together creators who have opened new horizons in contemporary culture and passionate fans. Last year, alternative K-pop band Balming Tiger and electronica band IDIOTAPE joined us. Even so, this year’s lineup is especially abundant.

Musician Chang Kiha takes part in The Cinephiles Strike Back, where audiences watch films selected by master cinephiles back-to-back without any prior information. Director Jung Sung-il invites musician Chang Kiha and literary critic Shin Hyoung Cheol to explore their tastes and interpretations of cinema.

San San Jo Gak (2026), centered on Chang Kiha’s first full-length solo album released 24 years after his debut, will premiere together with a making-of documentary as a 72-minute program.

Celebrating its 20th anniversary, Sultan of the Disco returns after six years with Super Disco (2018), while Jonathan Demme and Talking Heads’ concert film Stop Making Sense (1984) returns as a dance-along screening. Both offer the special experience of joining the concert crowd and watching the bands from within it.

Let’s find our own rhythm and dance—even the introverts among us—until we can finally shake free of the confines of our bodies.

A 20th-anniversary screening of Once (2006) also pays tribute to its star Glen Hansard, while Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) takes us into the folk scene before the arrival of Bob Dylan. Immerse yourself in the appeal of the guitar and a folk sensibility that “neither grows old nor becomes new.”

JEONGMILLA, winner of three awards at the 2021 Korean Music Awards, and folk duo Sanmanhan, winner of the New Artist award at the 2025 Korean Music Awards, will also perform after the screenings, promising another treat for the ears.

BIFF Everywhere has more music in store. Words from the Wind (2025), which traces the history of Korean popular music through artists including Cho Yong-pil, will screen in celebration of the 90th anniversary of composer Kim Hee-kap’s birth. Singer-director Shin Seung-eun’s I Am Happy (2025) also comes with a pre-screening performance.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (2025) follows an unknown band with little connection to Kurt Cobain’s legendary Nirvana. After sweeping Canadian film awards and finding box-office success, the film is also a testament to comedy YouTuber Moon Sang-hoon’s eye for a great find—he was the one who brought the title to Korea.

Its absurd premise—the band builds a time machine for a gig and travels back 17 years to when they first met—is a 40th-anniversary riff on Back to the Future (1985).

Community BIFF screens Back to the Future one day, followed by Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie at BIFF Everywhere the next. Watch them in that order, and Alan Silvestri’s music—and the traces of its influence—may come through even more clearly. Zemeckis and Silvestri form one of cinema’s best-known director-composer partnerships.

Community BIFF’s All Day Cinema features Local & Social DAY, Science DAY, and Bechdel DAY. Science DAY uses science fiction to imagine humanity’s future and scientific rationality to question and reflect on how knowledge is produced. This year, the program includes two science-fiction films by Robert Zemeckis. Following Back to the Future (1985), entomologist and cartoonist Gallois will present a live-drawing session. Marking the 30th anniversary of astronomer Carl Sagan’s passing, CONTACT (1997), adapted from his only novel, will be presented with Dr. Sim Chae Kyung, a scientist helping shape the future of lunar science, for a truly cosmic rendezvous. Following The Adjustment Bureau (2011), adapted from a work by science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick, known for exploring questions of human identity, SF novelist Kim Bo-young, author of the internationally acclaimed Stellar Odyssey Trilogy, will take part in the program.

The Park Hae-young universe also makes its way to the big screen. We will screen one episode from the 12-part series We Are All Trying Here (2026). Screenwriter Park Hae-young, director Cha Young-hun, and actors including Oh Jung-se and Kang Mal-geum will appear at the festival while in the midst of filming their next project. Park Hae-joon will receive a plaque honoring him as “Busan’s Beloved Film Icon” at The Night Before BIFF, while Koo Kyo-hwan, Oh Jung-se, and Han Sun-hwa also appear in Community BIFF titles. The gloom and awkwardness of Hwang Dong-man, the protagonist whose eccentric behavior makes him seem like a social misfit, mirror something inside all of us before we step into the ring. I believe that the struggle against a sense of worthlessness has value in itself.

Let’s return to where this piece began. The phrase I used for this year’s two Master Talk films—“films with distinctive styles of their own, with the clash between dreams and reality and a deep sense of longing leaving a powerful and lasting impression”—also applies to the music films introduced above, as well as Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, We Are All Trying Here, and Nouvelle Vague (2025).

Richard Linklater has made a bold film in the same wild spirit of freedom and liberation as his cinematic idol, Jean-Luc Godard. The reckless bravado of youth, along with the thrill and fear of making a first film, may even bring Hwang Dong-man to mind. After the screening, Professor Jung Il-young, known for his lively wit, will jump-cut us straight to the streets of Paris, where Godard was making his debut film.

This year, Community BIFF will screen How to Use Guys with Secret Tips (2013), the feature debut of Lee Won-suk and the first film starring Oh Jung-se in a leading role. The Special Program in Focus: Those Beautiful Years, Ahn Sung-ki will also present Gagman (1988), the debut feature of Lee Myung-se.

BIFF Everywhere will also present a tribute talk in memory of the late Ahn Sung-ki with director Kim Hong-Joon, director Lee Myung-se, and actor Jung Kyung-soon. His smile seemed to embrace life wholeheartedly, with a depth that went beyond sorrow and moved us to both laughter and tears. May he live on through his films as an enduring face of youth, loved for generations to come.

In 1976 vs 2026: Conversation with 20-year-old Cinephiles, director and renowned cinephile Kim Hong-Joon will talk with today’s young people about the solitude of his half-century journey in cinema and what it meant to be young in the 1970s. At the 30th-anniversary screening of his music film Jungle Story (1996), the youth of musicians Yoon Do-hyun, Kim Chang Wan, and the late Shin Hae Chul will also shine on the BIFF Square screen.

BIFF Everywhere, a festival where anyone can easily enjoy cinema and arts as well as the charms of the city and nature without cultural barriers, will take place across 18 locations this year in collaboration with local universities and youth organizations.

The program includes 20th-anniversary screenings of Bong Joon-ho’s The Host (2006), Hula Girls (2006), and Memories of Matsuko (2006), as well as a special showcase featuring Kang Jin-ah. Short films, barrier-free screenings, and programs centered on running, reading, Buddhism, and animals add even more variety while making the festival more accessible and welcoming to a wider range of audiences.

Born of the stars and traveling the Earth, may our encounter with Busan help us know ourselves better and move forward, proclaiming that other worlds are possible. May we stay forever young, full of excitement and joy.

2026 Community BIFF – The Night Before BIFF

October 5 (Mon), 2026, 7:00 PM / Nampo-dong BIFF Square Outdoor Stage

2026 Community BIFF
October 8 (Thu)–11 (Sun), 2026

2026 BIFF Everywhere
October 3 (Sat)–15 (Thu), 2026