The DMZ Korean International Documentary Festival will be held in a border town next month, screening 74 documentaries from around the world with the themes of peace, family and the environment, organizers said Tuesday.
The nascent festival, which was launched last year, will be held Sept. 9-13 in Paju, just below the Demilitarized Zone bisecting South and North
Korea, they said.
"Peace" by Japanese filmmaker Kazuhiro Soda, which follows the daily lives of residents and stray cats in the city of Okayama to show the
remnants of Japanese past militarism, will open the event.
Its international competitive section has 13 films vying for the grand prize, with topics addressing family, war, disease and the socially
marginalized. Six of them are from Asia, five from Europe and two from North America.
In another competitive section, eight homegrown entries will run for the Best Korean Documentary award.
Overall, 74 documentaries from 35 countries will be screened during the five-day event.
"The DMZ will be remembered for all time as the symbol of reconciliation and exchange," Gyeonggi Province Governor and festival director Kim Moon-su
said in a press conference. "We will make our utmost efforts to support the DMZ film festival so it can become a festival in which the past meets the future and peace meets dreams."
The event will also screen films about Latin America, the unification of East and West Germany in 1990, and the Korean War that broke out 60 years
ago.