The 31st Busan International Film Festival announced on Aug. 27 the six actors who will take part in "Actors' House." Kim Go-eun, Kim Min-ha, Ryu Seung-ryong, Shin Min-a, Lee Min-ho and Ju Ji-hoon are on the list. It is the festival's first major lineup this year, coming forty days before the opening.
Actors' House is a signature program of the festival, launched in 2021. The one who takes the stage is the actor, and there is no unveiling of a new film and no trophy. The lighting is low, and on a stage holding only a chair and a microphone the actor has to put the time they have passed through into sentences. The festival describes it as a talk program in which actors look back over their filmographies and share their acting philosophies and untold stories with the audience.
Kim Go-eun arrived with force in "A Muse" (2012), and after "Coin Locker Girl" (2015) and "Goblin" (2016) she became a ten-million-admission actor with "Exhuma" (2024). Through "Love in the Big City" (2024), "Eun-jung and Sang-yeon" (2025) and "The Price of Confession" (2025), the gaps between her works are tight as well. An actor who has changed her voice and her walk for each character will explain the inside of those transformations herself.
Kim Min-ha is the person who will stand in Busan most often at this year's festival. She has taken on the role of sole host of the opening ceremony, and her name is also on the opening film "Day and Night to Each Other" and the On Screen invitation "Cushy Job" as the lead. After drawing the world's attention with "Pachinko" (2022·2024), she has built up emotional density in "Light Shop" (2024) and "Typhoon Family" (2025). Within ten days she takes on the host on stage, the lead on screen, and the speaker explaining her own acting.
Ryu Seung-ryong made a face audiences trust with "War of the Arrows" (2011), "Miracle in Cell No. 7" (2013) and "Extreme Job" (2019), and won the Grand Prize in the television category at the 2026 Baeksang Arts Awards for the drama "The Story of Manager Kim, Who Owns His Home in Seoul and Works at a Large Company" (2025). In Busan this year he has ahead of him the release of "The Jeong Family," an invited title in Korean Cinema Today - Special Premiere.
Shin Min-a won a broad audience with "The Devil" (2007), "My Girlfriend Is a Nine-Tailed Fox" (2010) and "Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha" (2021), then moved to characters of a different grain such as "Karma" (2025). She is also the lead of the On Screen invitation "The Remarried Empress." How the actor herself explains the route she took from romantic comedy to suspense becomes the point to watch on this stage.
Lee Min-ho stood at the center of the Korean Wave with "Boys Over Flowers" (2009), and took his first screen lead with "Gangnam Blues" (2015), winning Best New Actor at the Grand Bell Awards. After meeting viewers around the world again with "Pachinko," he has widened the range of his roles as far as "Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint" (2025). Ju Ji-hoon started out in "Goong" (2006) and built up bold characters with "Asura: The City of Madness" (2016) and "The Spy Gone North" (2018), and has passed through back-to-back ten-million-admission runs with the two "Along with the Gods" films, "Kingdom" and "The Trauma Code" (2025).
The six have different starting points. Actors who began on screen, actors who made their names on television, and actors who moved to the center after long years in supporting parts have gathered in one program. What they share is the time of labor repeated in front of a camera, and Actors' House returns that time in a person's voice instead of a finished work.
The dates and venues for each actor, and the way audiences will get seats, have not been announced. The festival's organizing committee will release the full lineup of invited films on Sept. 1, and the detailed shape of the program is expected to come out around the same time. The festival runs for ten days from Tuesday, Oct. 6 to Thursday, Oct. 15, and the main venue is the Busan Cinema Center.
Once Sept. 1 passes, dates will be attached to the six names. The day to mark on the calendar then is not the opening ceremony. It is the day an actor you have watched for a long time sits down with a microphone. Under the low lighting of the Busan Cinema Center, there are stories that begin only after the screen goes dark.
