Announcing the 2021 21st Korea Queer Film Festival

2021-04-21

Greetings from Korea Queer Film Festival Executive Committee.

The selection of international and Korean entries submitted from Nov 2020 to March 2021 has been completed. First of all, we thank all creators for submitting their precious works for 21st Korea Queer Film Festival, heading 20th anniversary this year. 

Korea Queer Film Festival selected 41 films among 385 international entries, and 13 films among 44 Korean entries.

For the international entries, we put attention to the completeness of the work and well-organized narratives, but also put more emphasis on the films made in the non-western part of the world. Although queer discourse tends to be centered on discussions of the Western’s, we tried not to overlook the fact that queer discourse does exist in several other regions as well including Asia. As a result, films from Japan, Taiwan, China, Thailand, India, Uganda and Tanzania are selected to look into what kinds of queer voices and movements exist in each country.

Among international entries, especially, there were many interesting stories of queer bodies and gender non-conformers. Among them, we selected the films we would like to share with Korean audiences. In addition, variety of topics like current pandemic situation, immigration and refugees, and last but not least sexual violence in queer communities were selcted for diverse audiences’ experience. 

For the Korean entries, we focused on slightly ‘different’ stories. Many works containing the creator’s effort and concerns were there, however it was a bit disappointing that the focus was still on love or dating. We look forward to seeing more works dealing with queers’ lives from a wider angle.  

For both international and Korean entries, we also focused on films that teenagers and youth can be related to and share in common like teenager’s concern, challenges, and life adventures. We would like to send our gratitude to the creators for submitting such a good works so that queer teenagers can find themselves and enjoy their stories.

It was not a easy decision for us, however, it was joyful to reaffirm that more and more works are reflecting the intersectional situations that people with queer identity face. Despite the hard times due to the social disaster COVID-19, it was honor to discover the creators who are fiercely maintaining life in their own situation. We are sending warm applause to all.

The 21st Korea Queer Film Festival is now on its way to beginning. To celebrate our 20th anniversary, we will prepare various programs to communicate with audiences. Not only Guest Visit or Queer-Talk, we will hold conference to share queer media discourses with more audiences. We ask for your warm support.

We look forward to the day we meet through the film festival.

Thank you.