Korean martial arts fantasy film Arahan has won two top awards at this year’s Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival. The Puchon festival is the largest genre festival in Asia and gives a pretty strong indicator of what to expect from the region over the next year. Arahan won both the jury’s Best of Puchon award as well as the Citizen’s Award as the favorite film as chosen by festival patrons. I was thinking Arahan was a strong contender to be in the Toronto Festival even before the strong showing at Puchon, and this makes it even more likely.
In other interesting news from Puchon Chan Wook Park’s contribution to Three: Monster was a surprise screening and word on the street is that all three parts of the anthology film are now complete. Mamoru Oshii’s Innocence also won a special jury award.
Check out the Arahan website here and the trailer here.
Oooh … pretty (and cheap!) limited edition DVD release of this is due out on August 19th. Check out all the specs here. Shipping’s expensive from that site, so I’m waiting for Yesasia to start taking orders but I’ll definitely be picking this up …