Bucheon film fest bets big on AI as it turns 30

Asia’s leading genre fest stacks its milestone edition with generative tools, immersive work and a record 321-title lineup

From left: Executive Director Shin Chul, festival Chair Chang Mi-hee and opening ceremony Director Song Seung-whan attend a press conference for the 30th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival in Seoul on Tuesday. (Yonhap)

The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN) is doubling down on artificial intelligence and immersive media for its 30th edition, organizers said at a Seoul press conference Tuesday.

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The push extends a direction the festival set last year, when it opened with a feature built on an AI-generated screenplay and ran a multi-day conference on the technology. This time it has gone even further: Of the record 321 films from 50 countries playing July 2-12 in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, 38 were made with AI tools and 28 are extended-reality projects, screening alongside 170 features and 85 shorts.

Executive director Shin Chul pitched the shift as a way to ride out a market squeezed by streaming and generative AI rather than wait it out. “We’re reshaping BIFAN to meet the era that’s coming,” he said. The festival is angling to pull theaters and streaming closer together, he added, and to put AI tools directly in the hands of working filmmakers.

The centerpiece of this year’s agenda is the Bucheon AI Content Summit, a new umbrella initiative meant to knit together training, production, screening and industry deals. The aim is to build a working pipeline for AI-assisted filmmaking rather than wave it through as a one-off curiosity. Folded into the summit are an international conference, a showcase for AI and XR creators, and a slate of business meetings.

A separate immersive strand, “Beyond Reality,” fans out XR and other pieces across the city, turning venues into stops on one roving exhibition.

Festival chair Chang Mi-hee cast this year’s guiding idea as imagination without borders. “We want to show how AI and new technology can merge with the imagination of cinema,” she said, adding that the program would still reach for the human side of the form.

Festival chair Chang Mi-hee speaks at a press conference for the 30th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, Tuesday. (Yonhap)

The theme carries over to the festival’s look. This year’s symbol is a chameleon, chosen for its knack for changing color, and the short branding clip that runs before screenings was made with AI.

This year’s lineup runs on a reworked structure under the slogan “New Era, New Skin.” The competition now sits under a single “Bucheon Choice” banner spanning international, Korean and AI titles, while a new gala section, “Signature,” rounds up fresh work from marquee directors. This includes Japanese auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa, of “Cure” and “Pulse,” and Indonesia’s Joko Anwar, behind “Satan’s Slaves.”

A three-year survey of Asian genre cinema, “Asian Genre Films 99,” meanwhile, kicks off this year with 33 Korean titles drawn from the past three decades.

Yuen Woo-ping’s martial-arts romp “Blades of the Guardians,” starring action icon Jet Li in a special appearance, opens the festival. As for the ceremony itself, humanoid robots will share the stage with human performers.

“We want the opening ceremony to put BIFAN’s new era into visible form,” the ceremony’s chief director Song Seung-whan said.