[BIFF 2025 Planning] Environment and Tradition, Four Stories from the Screen

Environment — Traces of Development and Loss

Becoming Human

As the spirit Tida, who resides in an old cinema slated for demolition, meets Hai, who seeks to record childhood memories, the history and present of Cambodia intersect. The scars of the Khmer Rouge era and the losses from indiscriminate development overlap, as the director reflects the wounds of the era and environment through personal dialogue. Director Polen Lee's feature debut delicately shows how environmental destruction and the severance of memory shake lives.

I Only Rest in the Storm

Sergio's journey to West Africa to investigate a road construction project soon expands into a story intertwined with local society's power and desires. The reality of the environment and community being shaken under the name of development is woven into the characters' relationships and intimate narratives. Introduced in the Un Certain Regard section of the 78th Cannes Film Festival, this work reduces the grand discourse of neocolonialism to personal experience, posing weighty questions.

Tradition — Echoes of Memory and Succession

The River That Holds Our Hands

Starting from the memory of a girl separated from her family by war, it depicts a journey returning to the space of the river through the times of the Cultural Revolution and diaspora. The flow of the river connects the severed times, allowing hands to meet again. Director Chen Jianhang's feature debut records that the act of connecting scattered memories is a way of continuing tradition.

KOKUHO

Set against the backdrop of a Kabuki stage, the narrative of friendship and conflict shared over 50 years between Kikuo and Shunsuke shows how tradition intersects with individual lives. Director Lee Sang-il's direction goes beyond the specific art of Kabuki, posing the question of how the weight of tradition lives and moves today.

The environment is revealed through the losses left by development, and tradition is revived through memory and succession. The four films start from different perspectives but ultimately meet in the same place. The films do not provide answers. They simply guide the audience to look together at the places of loss and succession.