In fiction, a total number of films submitted are decreased, but JIFF invites remarkable films representing the core of the contemporary films to this section. Among those, 3 Portuguese films are noteworthy. Having been beloved by JIFF audiences, Manoel de Oliveira‘s latest work, <The Strange Case of Angelica>, is screened; another Portuguese master João Botelho‘s <The Film of Disquiet>; and a Chilean director Raúl Ruiz‘s <Mysteries of Lisbon> is in the list. These films are masterpieces of showing the aesthetic power of the contemporary Portuguese cinema with other 11 precious Portuguese films will be screening in JIFF special section dedicating to the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relationship between Korea and Portugal.

JIFF has made waves with impressive retrospective sections of a Hungarian master Béla Tarr in 2008 and a Polish master Jerzy Skolimowski in 2009. Jerzy Skolimowski won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival with <Essential Killing> last year and Béla Tarr won the Grand Jury Prize at this year‘s Berlin International Film Festival with <The Turin Horse>. The return of two masters to JIFF will be good news to JIFF audience. In addition, two of the directors who participated in Jeonju Digital Project will return with their latest works; a Canadian director Denis Côté who won the Best Director Award at the Locarno International Film Festival last year comes back to JIFF with <Curling> and director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, from Chad, who won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes International Film Festival with <A Screaming Man>. A Japanese director Kumakiri Kazuyoshi who raised the level of the Japanese realism cinema with <Sketches of Kaitan City> and Kelly Reichardt‘s <Meek‘s Cutoff>, successfully combining the western drama, the oldest and masculine genre, with a rhythm of the modern cinema and a feminine gaze, can be called as new auteurs of our generation.

If closely looking at the foreign films screening at this year‘s JIFF Cinemascape, a difference can be found, which is that the number of documentary films in Cinemascape is drastically increased. As a winner of Academy Best Documentary Film Award, Charles Ferguson‘s <Inside Job>, sharply investigating on the crisis of the world economy in 2008; <Cave of Forgotten Dreams (3D)> by Werner Herzog, proving the possibility of mixing 3D technology with documentary genre; and Patricio Guzman, a well known director of a legendary trilogy on the <Battle of Chile>, returns with his latest fine work <Nostalgia for the Light>.

Above all, please be noted on the films seeking a universal cinematic structure that has innately existed from the moment of the birth of cinema with raising questions on the suspicious and artificial division of fiction and documentary. There are various methods that the films are taking such as by embracing coincidently occurred dramatic elements in the processing of recording the reality to open the possibility of fiction being loosely interwoven in documentary films, or instead of suppressing the lively power of reality which emerges in the developing phase of fiction, rather seeking a way to go along with it, or giving up settling in a specific genre from the beginning, approaching a theme with an enquiring attitude of essayist. However, those strategies are the same at the bottom in that they are all throwing fundamental questions on the conventional cinematic structure which has long burdened artists.

Films showing this tendency are; as acclaimed as one of the best debut films of 2011, a famous street artist Banksy‘s film, <Exit through the Gift Shop>; a world acclaimed film critic Noël Burch‘s <The Forgotten Space> (co-directed by Allan Sekula) which won the Special Orizzonti Jury Prize at Venice International Film Festival 2010; <You All Are Captains> by Oliver Laxe; <Robinson In Ruins> in Robinson Trilogy by Patrick Keiller; Khavn de la Cruz‘s <Son of God> an incisive satire on the documentary films mostly made in the west with a view of Orientalism; <The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu> by Andrei Ujică is a masterpiece of found footage films which oddly looks like a historical fiction film only by combined with unknown and discovered footages in the film archives.

There are a number of documentaries resting on the strong trust on ―the power of words‖ which testifies the history and memories. Those documentaries contain the ethics of camera, being able to listen to what people, either on standing or sitting, are saying until the very end without any aesthetical devices. For instance, <Karamay> by Xu Xin discloses the truth of a tragic fire incident covered up by the Chinese government by consisting of testimonies of victims‘ families and survivors. And <El Sicario - Room 164> can be called an ―interpretation of confession‖ in that analyzing on horrible words and gestures of a retired killer. Especially, <Sodankylä Forever> by Peter von Bagh full of affections for the films of legendary filmmakers will be a special gift for those who visit JIFF this year.