BUSAN SHOWS MANILA HOW
A UP student film won a trip to Busan. The bigger prize is seeing how Korea turns stories into an industry.
A UP student film won a trip to Busan. The bigger prize is seeing how Korea turns stories into an industry.
A group of young Filipino filmmakers is headed to South Korea after winning a film competition in Manila, part of a Korean cultural program that is giving local creators a closer look at how the country turns homegrown stories into movies with audiences far beyond Korea.
Students from the University of the Philippines Diliman won the top prize in the “Kwentong Korea” competition for their film “When Love Met a Language,” the Korean Cultural Center in the Philippines said.
The prize takes them to the Busan International Film Festival, one of Asia’s major film festivals, later this year.
The competition was part of the 2026 Korean Film Festival, held in Manila and other Philippine cities this month.
This year, the Koreans also brought webtoon artist Lee Younchang, who created “My Daughter is a Zombie,” to meet Filipino artists and conduct a workshop for aspiring creators at the Met Museum of Manila.
Lee also sat down with Filipino graphic novelist Arnold Arre, known for The Mythology Class and The Children of Bathala, at the Cinematheque Center Manila.
Their discussion focused on webtoons and graphic novels and how stories move between different formats and audiences.
That process was all over this year’s fest.
Five Korean movies were screened free from 7 August to 9 at cinemas in Metro Manila, Iloilo and Davao. The lineup included Your Letter, Love in the Big City, My Daughter is a Zombie, Omniscient Reader and Yumi’s Cells: The Movie.
All began as literary works or webtoons before reaching movie screens.
South Korea has become one of the world’s biggest exporters of pop culture, with Korean TV, films, music and webtoons finding large audiences in the Philippines.
The festival put Filipino creators closer to the other side of that trade: how those stories are developed before they become exports.
KCC director Kim Myeongjin said this year’s program was designed around stories moving across cultures and generations.
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