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"Breathless" Wins Top Prize in Rotterdam

Th 38th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) awarded actor-director Yang Ik-june's feature "Breathless" the top Tiger award, sharing the honors with Iran's Be Calm and Count to Seven and Turkey's Wrong Rosary. The fest handed out 3 VPRO Tiger awards to the winning trio, worth EUR 15,000 each.

"Breathless" had its International Premiere at IFFR after making its world premiere last October at Pusan. YANG both wrote the screenplay and took the lead role in this film about a tough, course-mouthed gangster's relationship with a precocious high school girl. The HD feature received funding support from KOFIC and Pusan's Asian Cinema Fund.

YANG's directing debut was praised by the IFFR jury as "a powerfully rendered and acted film with a keen sense of reality in its portrayal of a situation that has been seldom seen in the cinema". "Breathless" is to be released in Korea this April. International sales are being handled by Showbox/Mediaplex Inc.

This year's Tiger jury included PARK Ki-yong, head of KOFIC's Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA) and director of the features "Motel Cactus" (1997) and "Camel(s)" (2001). Previous Korean winners of the Tiger are Hong Sang-soo's "The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well" (1996) and Park Chan-ok's "Jealousy Is My Middle Name" (2002).

Nigel D'Sa (KOFIC)

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