Jeonju International Film Festival kicks off today without fanfare

The Jeonju International Film Festival will be held from May 1 to 15 and a total of 181 films (142 features and 39 shorts) from 44 countries will be screened. This year, the film festival will be held in a calm and reserved atmosphere in consideration of the national mourning of the victims of the April 16 deadly ferry sinking. Organizers have canceled the opening ceremony scheduled for Thursday and the red carpet event for the award ceremony on next Wednesday.

Kim Yeong-jin and two other programmers recommended five films to pay attention to. "Mr. X" is a documentary illuminating artistic career of French film director Leos Carax, who emerged as a pallbearer of the Nouvelles Images with his 1984 film "Boy Meets Girl," fell to despair after "Pola X" in 1999 and then rose again with "Holy Motors" in 2012.

"Joe" (2013) by David Gordon Green, a leading American indie film director, debuted at the Venice Film Festival last year. The film has an interesting plot, in which Joe (Nicolas Cage), an ex-con logger, has strange communion with a boy suffering under a drunken father. Cage performs a double-sided man who is a cruel alcohol dependent as well as a fighter for the values of his community.

"Burning Bush" by Polish director Agnieszka Holland, who is known for her 1995 film "Total Eclipse," embodies how a burning bush leads to a historical event, Prague Spring, through a complex structure and lots of characters.

Among Korean films, the programmers recommended director Park Jung-bum`s "Alive" and Kim Kyung-mook`s "Futureless Things." The two films dig into problems in Korean society – the former through a soybean paste factory worker and the latter through various people coming to a convenience store.