2013 marks the 18th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), one of the biggest in Asia. This year almost a quarter-million people came to see 300 films from 70 different countries. There are screenings all over Busan and tons of satellite events featuring actors and film makers from around the world. This year, Quentin Tarantino visited Busan for the festival.

In 2011, this cinema center was built near Centum City (which is just across the Suyeong river from where we live)

This complex cost $150 million to build and features a 4,000 seat outdoor theater as well as 4 indoor screens under a LED roof

Here’s a pic under the roof when it’s lit up. During the premier night, we walked over to take in the atmosphere and discovered a stall giving away free beer.

Here is some more info about BIFF

There was events all around the city including Haeundae beach

October 3rd is Founder’s Day in Korea. This holiday celebrates the founding of Gojoseon (ancient state of Korea) in 2333 B.C. We took a vacation day as well which gave us a 4 day weekend to soak in the BIFF and catch a few movies.

We went through the hundreds of films playing and selected the ones we wanted to get tickets for. Here’s our strategy sheet for buying tickets

So we ended up getting tickets for 5 movies (some were already sold out when we tried to buy them the first day they were available)

Here’s the list (Click on any title for more info)

Mirror Without Reflection (Tajikistan); The Lunchbox (India) – our favorite that we saw; Shuttlecock (Korea); Dynamite Man (Korea); and Guardian (Korea)

That’s Korea’s Flag (above) called Taegukgi 태극기 flying for the holiday

There were events all along Haeundae beach as well

Samsung 삼성 had an area showing off their newest gear