Kim Jong-kwan's 'The Table: Day and Night' to Open the 31st Busan International Film Festival
The Busan International Film Festival has chosen Kim Jong-kwan's The Table: Day and Night as its opening film for the 31st edition, giving the Korean director's ensemble romance its world premiere on 6 October 2026 (Variety; BIFF).
The film follows four couples moving through different stages of love, all inside the same café across a summer and autumn, told through low-key conversational scenes. The structure is one Kim knows well: his 2016 feature The Table used the same four-stories-one-space device and screened in BIFF's Korean Cinema Today — Panorama section that year (Variety).
The cast spans established names and rising faces: Kim Minha, Joo Jong-hyuk, Han Sun-hwa, Chang Ryul, Shim Eun-kyung, Lee Hee-jun, Jeon So-young and Kim Dong-hwi (Variety).
Kim Jong-kwan's career began with the 2004 short How to Operate a Polaroid Camera, which earned the jury's special prize at the Mise-en-scène Short Film Festival. His feature debut, Come, Closer, arrived in 2010. Worst Woman (2016) took the Fipresci Prize — the international critics' award — at Russia's Moscow International Film Festival. His filmography also includes Josée (2020), Shades of the Heart (2021), and omnibus contributions to the Netflix series Persona (2019), Vestige (2022) and The Killers (2024) (Variety).
The 31st BIFF runs 6–15 October in Busan, with the 21st Asian Contents & Film Market — the festival's industry marketplace, where sales agents and buyers trade rights — running 10–13 October (Variety).
Beyond the Busan premiere, Kim is preparing the local release of another film, Frosted Window, timed alongside the festival (Variety).
For a director who has built a career on quiet, talk-driven films set in single locations, the opening-night slot puts his signature style on one of Asia's largest festival stages. The Busan opening film sets the tone for ten days of programming — and for Kim, it brings the story full circle, back to the same festival that welcomed The Table a decade earlier.
