Discovery is an international competition dedicated to first or second feature films by female filmmakers from around the world. This year, 394 films from 86 countries were submitted, and eight have been selected for the final competition. The selected films will be judged during the festival, with the Best Feature and Special Jury Prize awarded.
Markedly higher than last year’s total, the submitted works formed concentric circles from diverse perspectives, without a fixed center, illuminating a wide range of feminist issues. Many of the films captured our attention with their cinematic rhetoric, addressing themes such as post-globalization and the divisive landscape of a new Cold War era, the colonial legacy of exploitation and hate, ongoing political conflicts worldwide, and the exploration of adolescent sexuality. These works offered piercing insights into discrimination and violence, demonstrated a keen sensitivity to emotional and bodily experience, and expressed a profound longing for healing and restoration. They provided us with a meaningful encounter with new cinematic possibilities. As for the narrative films, we encountered a wide range of films by women that explored specific regional, national, and thematic concerns. These included films about young girls discovering their corporeality while navigating adolescence during the pandemic, stories exploring the sense of isolation evoked by rural or neglected urban areas, and genre-informed approaches to care work, examining it as both a social duty and a form of emotional labor. Many of the films stood out for their nuanced and distinctive storytelling. Some impressed with their tight, focused intensity, while others charmed us with looser rhythms, evoking the mood of an idle stroll or a formless daydream. Meanwhile, the majority of submissions were documentaries, many of which reached an exceptional standard in the form of subjective essays and personal testimonies. These works prompted us to reflect on the retrospective function of archival practices and to consider the evolving aesthetics and formal experimentation within the documentary genre.
Eight films have advanced to the final round following the preliminary selection. These works come from a wide range of regions, including Spain, Chile, Australia, Japan, India, and the United States, as well as lesser-known European countries such as Lithuania and Slovenia. Although the reduced presence from Korea and other parts of Asia is somewhat disappointing, we are excited to showcase films that explore a variety of themes and styles, each offering a unique perspective from its filmmaker. We look forward to sharing these debut and second features by emerging female directors, who represent the future of cinema, with audiences around the world. (SON Sinae and SONG Hyojoung)
