Lee Chang-dong to Receive MIFFest Lifetime Achievement
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- Lee Chang-dong will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at MIFFest, with MIFFest president Joanne Goh citing his work's "honesty, compassion, and profound understanding of humanity"; the tribute includes screenings of Peppermint Candy and Oasis.
- The 9th MIFFest runs July 18–25 in Kuala Lumpur and will present 65 films from 35 countries in 27 languages, including two world premieres, one international premiere, three Asian premieres, 12 Southeast Asian premieres, and 28 Malaysian premieres.
- Chinese actor-director Wu Jing will receive the festival's Excellent Achievement in Film Award, paired with a screening of Yuen Woo-Ping's Blades of the Guardians: Wind Rises in the Desert.
- The festival opens with the world premiere of Malaysian director Ariff Zulkarnain's BAGA: Tomorrow Belongs To No One and closes with Yellow Letters by İlker Çatak, which won the Golden Bear at the 76th Berlin Film Festival.
- Indian filmmaker Anurag Kashyap will preside over the International Competition jury, joined by Midi Z, Ananda Everingham, Man Lim-chung, and Sharifah Amani; the 10-film competition is reserved for directors with three or fewer narrative features.
- Two new strands debut this year: Korean Cinema: A Culture in Motion, and a Russian Film Week presented with the Russian Ministry of Culture and Roskino, spanning Tarkovsky's Andrey Rublev to contemporary titles like Sidney Lumet's Birthday.
Why it matters: MIFFest is positioning itself as a Southeast Asian hub by pairing a marquee Korean auteur retrospective with a Russian cinema strand co-presented by the Russian Ministry of culture, signaling that cultural diplomacy from Moscow continues even as other Russian soft-power channels tighten. For emerging Asian and Global South filmmakers, the festival's 10-film competition — capped at directors with three or fewer features and judged by Kashyap — offers a rare Southeast Asian showcase for early-career work.
