The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN) is building its 30th edition, running 2 to 12 July, around AI and immersive media, organisers said at a Seoul press conference. The record programme has 321 titles from 50 countries: 38 used AI tools and 28 are XR pieces, next to 170 features and 85 shorts. It continues last year's course, when the festival opened with a film built on an AI-written screenplay and ran several days of talks on the subject.
The centrepiece is a new Bucheon AI Content Summit, which combines a conference, an AI and XR showcase and business meetings to build a working route for AI-assisted films. AI titles now compete alongside others under a single "Bucheon Choice" banner. Executive director Shin Chul said the festival was reshaping itself for a market squeezed by streaming and AI, rather than waiting it out. He wants to bring cinemas and streaming closer and put AI tools in working filmmakers' hands. Chair Chang Mi-hee said the programme would still reach for cinema's human side.
An immersive strand, "Beyond Reality", spreads XR works around the city as one exhibition.
The festival's emblem is a chameleon, picked for changing colour, and the pre-screening branding clip was made with AI. Humanoid robots will share the opening-ceremony stage with performers before Yuen Woo-ping's "Blades of the Guardians", The Korea Herald reported.
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