The 31st Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) opened on Tuesday 6 October in the South Korean port city with a red-carpet ceremony at the Busan Cinema Center. Two of Asia’s best-known screen figures were at the heart of the evening: actor Michelle Yeoh and director Ann Hui. The festival runs until 15 October and, according to Screen International and The Korea Times, it is the largest edition since 2019, with films from 59 countries.
Asian Filmmaker of the Year
Malaysia-born Michelle Yeoh received the festival’s Asian Filmmaker of the Year award, which BIFF gives each year to a person or organisation for an exceptional contribution to Asian cinema. Previous winners, the festival notes, include Jafar Panahi, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Chow Yun-fat and Tony Leung Chiu-wai. Accepting the award, the Oscar winner said it was “very special to find my way back to Busan”, as Screen reported; her last visit was in 2011 with The Lady. This year she has chosen three of her films for a special programme, Reign of Assassins, Everything Everywhere All at Once and the 2026 short Sandiwara, and she is also presenting her latest feature, It’s My Time, her first Chinese-language film in almost a decade.
A camellia for Ann Hui
Hong Kong director Ann Hui received the Camellia Award, presented in partnership with the fashion house Chanel, which honours filmmakers who have helped raise the standing of women in the film industry. A leading figure of the Hong Kong New Wave, Hui has had more than a dozen features shown at Busan over the past 30 years, including A Simple Life and Our Time Will Come, and she won the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Venice in 2020. With typical good humour, she said that now she is nearly 80 and finds filmmaking difficult, the prize “comes just in time” for her to appreciate it more.
The festival’s founding director, Kim Dong-ho, received the Korean Cinema Award, and the competition jury is led by Chinese director Zhang Yimou. The opening film was Kim Jong-kwan’s The Table: Day and Night, a gentle romance set in a café as summer turns to autumn. Other guests on the red carpet included Charlotte Gainsbourg, Fan Bingbing, Hirokazu Koreeda and Alfonso Cuarón.
A white camellia is a lovely reminder that a single flower can say a great deal. If you like a floral touch, take a look at our natural ruby flower pendant, the morganite flower pendant necklace or our earrings collection for a little red-carpet sparkle of your own.
Sources: Screen International, “Michelle Yeoh honoured on starry opening night of Busan International Film Festival 2026” (6 October 2026); Busan International Film Festival press releases on the 2026 Asian Filmmaker of the Year, the Camellia Award and the opening ceremony; The Korea Times, “Busan Int’l Film Festival kicks off star-studded 10-day run” (6 October 2026).
