Majidi's 'Midday Meal' Wins BIFF Best Film, Qualifies for Oscars — SkimNews
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- Majid Majidi's "Midday Meal" won the BIFF Best Film Award, automatically qualifying the film — about a schoolteacher (Mohammad Rahimi) trying to keep his village school open — for submission to the Oscars' Best International Feature category.
- Taiwan's Lee Yun Chan (Robin Lee) won Best Director for "To Be Ordinary," her third Busan competition entry after 2005 debut "The Shoe Fairy."
- China's Zhou Xun won Best Actor for "The First Taste of Loneliness" (directed by Gu You), and Japan's Kashun Himeno won for "Satoko Always" (directed by Shuichi Okita); Li Danfeng took the Artistic Contribution prize for sound on the Zhou Xun film.
- Eddie Cahyono's Indonesian "Ibuku" won the Special Jury Prize, starring Christine Hakim as a widow marrying off her daughter to cover her husband's gambling debts.
- BIFF drew over 200,000 attendees — its highest film audience since 2015 — with an additional 77,000 at program and special events; festival organizers tied the growth to a new opening date and expanded screening program.
- Solaire Partners (Korea) and Questry Co (Japan) signed a $75 million (KRW 100 billion) MOU to launch a joint Korea-Japan content fund during the Asian Contents & Film Market, which drew 30,484 participants from 339 companies across 32 countries.
- Shashank Walia's Punjabi-language "Birds In The Dark" won the New Currents Award, while Mongolia's "Zogsool" (directed by Sakhya Byamba) swept four awards in the Vision section.
Why it matters: Majidi's BIFF win delivers "Midday Meal" an automatic Oscars-qualifying route through the festival itself, rather than a domestic submission gate. The $75 million Korea-Japan content fund is the single largest cross-border financing commitment to emerge from BIFF's market this year, and 200,000-plus attendees — the highest film audience since 2015 — confirms the festival's full post-pandemic recovery.
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