Queer Horror 'Leviticus' and Thriller 'Knock' Win Top Honors at Bucheon Film Festival (BIFAN)

A film industry's paradigm shift for what's next — BIFAN's take on genre upheaval and an AI revolution

The 30th edition of the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN) — where the imaginations of 321 films from 50 countries across the world collided — has finally unveiled the faces set to write a new milestone for genre cinema. On the 10th, the organizing committee announced the winners in 20 categories, including the awards for best film and best director, focusing global cinephiles' attention on Bucheon. Kicking off with flair on the 2nd, the festival runs through the 12th, keeping the heat at full blast.

In the fiercely competitive international competition feature category, the top prize went to director Adrian Chiarella's Leviticus. The jury praised the film for boldly dismantling the stale grammar of conventional horror and, through its fusion with the queer genre, proving outstanding aesthetic achievement and a fresh sense of visual delight.

In the Bucheon Choice Korean feature category, which spotlights the front line of Korea's genre filmmaking, director Jung Bum's Knock was named the top work. It is a masterful piece that took the cold reality faced by youth under facility protection and wrapped it in the outer skins of a crime thriller and a mystery, then carved it with precision. It drew overwhelming support by capturing both heavy social insight and the suspense distinctive to the genre.

The short film category also earned honors with works armed with flashes of inventiveness. Director Jose Eduardo Castilla Ponce's Bringing Back the Dead and director Hong Seung-gi's Mungchi each took home short film awards, signaling the arrival of a new generation of master filmmakers. In particular, reflecting the industry's sweeping shift this year, the newly created Bucheon Choice AI Film category saw Save Me selected as the inaugural best-works award. Rather than simply serving as a technical experiment, the result throws a weighty talking point by presenting an innovative steering wheel for the direction future cinema should take.