SEOUL, May 28 — This year’s Jeonju International Film Festival (JIFF), the country’s largest showcase of indie and art house films, will open without a public audience today due to concerns over the novel coronavirus pandemic, Yonhap news agency reported.

Rescheduled from the original April 30-May 9 slot, the 21st edition will run for 116 days with online screenings for competition sections and additional offline screenings for film buffs.

A total of 180 films from 38 countries are invited to this year’s edition.

Although the festival takes place behind closed doors due to Covid-19, 98 JIFF titles are available online on the local streaming platform Wavve for South Korean viewers until June 6.

The event’s organisers also said it will have offline screenings of nearly all features and shorts from June to September 20 to give audiences an opportunity to see the films on a big screen after the period for the online screenings.

Eleven films chosen out of 125 are up for competition in the Korean feature film competition category, including Gull by Lee Mijo and Daldongne 33 Up by Cho Uhn.

In the Korean short film competition section, 25 films are listed, with eight movies in the international competition category.

The scaled-down opening ceremony that takes place behind closed doors at the Korea Traditional Culture Center in Jeonju, 243 kilometres south of Seoul, will be live streamed on YouTube. The award winners of JIFF will be announced Monday. — Bernama