Former Busan International Film Festival curator Darae Kim, and film scholars Dina Iordanova and Chris Berry engage in a discussion of the Busan International Film Festival. BIFF’s nineteenth edition was held in October 2014 and screened 312 films from 79 countries to 226,473 audience members. Despite such outward signs of success and continued growth, the festival is now undergoing a crisis that is threatening its future, on the eve of its twentieth anniversary. Are such difficulties specific to Busan, or do they indicate a more general trend that results from new configurations in the public space of cinema and new managerial approaches to culture at large? This dossier combines a report on the Busan International Film Festival crisis with larger questions regarding film festivals. Three short essays consider the Busan festival situation from different perspectives, followed by a conversational exchange that aims to spur further thinking.

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