What’s showing at South Korea’s BiFan 2026 as it celebrates 30 years of Asian genre cinema

Marking its 30th anniversary, the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BiFan) in South Korea promises a typically raucous 11-day event from July 2 to 12. Staged in the bustling satellite city west of Seoul, Asia’s largest celebration of genre cinema has assembled a formidable selection of the latest horror, action, science fiction and fantasy films from around the globe.
This year, proceedings kick off with the local premiere of Hong Kong film legend Yuen Woo-ping’s blockbuster wuxia epic Blades of the Guardians. Other prominent international titles include Curry Barker’s low-budget horror sensation Obsession, Jane Schoenbrun’s Cannes favourite Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and Adrian Chiarella’s Australian shocker Leviticus.
Among the other selected Asian highlights are Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s stately chanbara (samurai cinema) thriller The Samurai and the Prisoner, Joko Anwar’s bloody prison horror Ghost in the Cell and Giddens Ko Ching-teng’s high school martial arts drama Kung Fu, alongside a robust line-up of debuting Korean features.
In recent years, BiFan has taken a sharp turn towards platforming AI filmmaking, with sections devoted to short-form and feature-length content created with the increasingly ubiquitous technology. More reassuring, however, is the fact that the festival still has an impressive line-up of retrospective screenings.

A golden age of genre cinema
As part of the 30th anniversary celebrations, BiFan has collaborated with the Korean Film Archive to curate a selection of Asian genre classics from the past three decades.
The “Asian Genre Films 99” programme will span BiFan’s next three editions, unveiling 33 titles annually from across the continent. With South Korea the focus of this year’s inaugural chapter, the festival has unveiled a list of films released between 1997 and today that the curators hope best exemplify the country’s impressive output of genre cinema.
Few will argue that the past three decades have been something of a golden age for the Korean industry, elevating highly respected filmmakers – including Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-wook and Kim Jee-woon – to international status and acclaim.
These emerging auteurs unleashed an onslaught of wickedly stylised and inventive genre films that have not only helped define the era, but have also inspired filmmakers throughout Asia and further afield.

Their reinterpretations of established formats – as diverse as the revenge thriller, historical drama, romantic melodrama and horror film – have since become mainstays of the local industry, largely due to the success of these breakout works.
Ten selections from the list will be screened at BiFan, giving attendees the opportunity to experience these modern classics on the big screen, while guest visits from the creatives responsible have been scheduled for each film.
Included in the sidebar are Lee Myung-se’s outrageously stylised crime thriller Nowhere to Hide (1999), starring Park Joong-hoon and Ahn Sung-ki, and Jang Joon-hwan’s genre-bending kidnapping caper Save the Green Planet! (2003), which was remade last year as Bugonia by Oscar nominee Yorgos Lanthimos.
Kim Jee-woon’s anarchic kimchi Western The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008), starring the impressive triumvirate of Song Kang-ho, Lee Byung-hun and Jung Woo-sung, benefits from a much-appreciated big-screen revival, as does Yeon Sang-ho’s box office smash zombie juggernaut Train to Busan (2016).
Emphasising that genre cinema does not always demand spine-chilling scares and copious bloodletting, Hur Jin-ho’s seminal tear-jerker Christmas in August (1998) also makes the cut.

Similarly, historical drama The King and the Clown, which details the forbidden relationship between a Joseon-era monarch (Jung Jin-young) and his court jester (Lee Joon-gi), was a surprise hit back in 2005, becoming the most successful Korean film of all time at that point.
Many films have since claimed that crown, reflecting the enthusiasm with which Korean audiences regularly champion local releases, including the 2019 action-comedy Extreme Job, in which a group of undercover police create a phoney chicken restaurant, only for the business to become a roaring success.
Both The King and the Clown and Extreme Job will screen during the festival, as will Ryoo Seung-wan’s brawny corruption thriller The Unjust (2010), starring Hwang Jung-min and Ryoo Seung-bum, alongside Oh Seung-uk’s romantic crime drama The Shameless (2015), in which Kim Nam-gil plays an undercover policeman who falls for his target’s mistress, played by Jeon Do-yeon.
Rounding out the selection is 2006’s Tazza: The High Rollers, a slick and witty gambling caper from writer-director Choi Dong-hoon.

While a notable success upon first release, the film is arguably a lesser entry in a filmography that includes 2012’s The Thieves and 2015’s rip-roaring period spy thriller Assassination, which pairs Jun Ji-hyun with Lee Jung-jae and Ha Jung-woo in an attempt to off a high-ranking official during the Japanese occupation.
Curatorial constraints and omissions
A review of the lauded titles reveals that the curators have attempted to showcase the work of as many A-list performers as possible, frequently selecting films headlined by different stars. Furthermore, they have limited themselves to only one feature from any given director.
As a result, Bong Joon-ho’s extraordinary true crime procedural Memories of Murder (2003) is selected at the expense of his historic Oscar-winning satire Parasite (2019).
Meanwhile, Park Chan-wook’s Cannes Grand Prix winner Oldboy (2003) secures its place but deprives audiences of the lush romantic thriller Decision to Leave (2022). Similarly, the selection from Kim Jee-woon’s notoriously eclectic oeuvre excludes seminal works like A Tale of Two Sisters (2003).

While the committee has still selected exceptional films, many of the era’s finest examples have been omitted due solely to an arbitrary restriction.
Some maverick auteurs are absent entirely. While nobody would expect to see the likes of Hong Sang-soo or Lee Chang-dong included in a list of genre filmmakers, there is nothing from the controversial Kim Ki-duk.
Admittedly, the filmmaker fell way out of favour in his later years, but early works like The Isle (2000) or 3-Iron (2004) straddled the gap between arthouse and exploitation with remarkable aplomb.
These omissions may reflect a desire to present a more even spread of films across the three decades, despite the undeniable fact that bona fide classics have been scarce in recent years compared with Korean cinema’s giddy heyday of the early 2000s.
Championing female filmmakers
A glaring anomaly is that only a solitary inclusion was directed by a woman: Yim Soon-rye’s 2008 sporting drama Forever the Moment. While many might argue that 2001’s Waikiki Brothers is far and away Yim’s best film, this phenomenon speaks more to the general lack of female representation within the industry.

As though to acknowledge this issue, an additional, complementary list of 11 films directed by female genre filmmakers has been chosen, among them Jeong Jae-eun’s coming-of-age classic Take Care of My Cat (2001) and Lee Kyoung-mi’s hormone-fuelled debut Crush and Blush (2008).
Five of these titles will also screen at BiFan’s 30th edition, including Lee Soo-youn’s chilling supernatural horror The Uninvited (2003) and Byun Young-joo’s missing person mystery Helpless (2012), starring Kim Min-hee, who also appears in Roh Deok’s workplace romcom Very Ordinary Couple (2013).
With at least 66 more modern classics poised for inclusion across BiFan’s next two editions, curious minds are already considering which other titles might make the grade. Suffice it to say that for fans of great Asian genre cinema, the celebrations are only just beginning.
BiFan runs from July 2 to 12 in Bucheon, South Korea. For full programme details, visit bifan.kr/eng.
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