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6 Korean Works to Compete in Annecy
BEAUTY WATER and THE SHAMAN SORCERESS Invited to Prestigious Animation Event
Six Korean films will compete at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival next month, which this year will take place online due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, led by the features Beauty Water and The Shaman Sorceress (2018), which have been invited to the Contrechamp competitive section.
Beauty Water is based on a popular body horror-themed webtoon from 2015 by OH Seong-dae that concerns a young woman obsessed with achieving physical perfection but things go horribly wrong when she uses a new cosmetic product. The film comes from debut feature director CHO Kyung-hun.
Adapted from the novel of the same name, The Shaman Sorceress (2018) follows a converted Christian son who returns to his shaman mother’s home, where a spiritual conflict begins to unfold. The film, which is the latest by veteran animation director AHN Jae-huun, previously screened at Annecy in 2016 as a work in progress. AHN took part in the main competition of the festival before with Green Days in 2011.
Established in 2018 to replace the Out-of-Competition section, the Contrechamp Competition was introduced to highlight the considerable development of feature film production globally.
Among the short films, PARK Jee-youn’s Ghosts will be screened in the short film competition lineup, both Nausea by HAN Subien and JEONG Hae-ji’s Sura will take part in ‘Graduation Short Films in Competition’ and MIN Sung-ah’s Boriya will be featured in ‘Young Audiences Short Films in Competition’.
Two Korean features have come away with the top prize at Annecy, the Crystal for a Feature Film, in the past: LEE Sung-gang’s My Beautiful Girl, Mari in 2002 and 2004’s Oseam (2003) by SUNG Baek-yeop. Meanwhile JEONG Da-hee won the Crystal for a Short Film in 2014 with Man on the Chair.
Annecy, a leading animation event that has been running since 1960, is scheduled to hold its online event from June 15 to 30.
