부대행사

SIFF X indieground ‘Independent Film Matching Project: NEXT LINK’ is South Korea’s first industry networking platform dedicated to independent cinema.

Now in its seventh edition, NEXT LINK’s ‘Distribution Matching Project’ supports feature films screening at the Seoul Independent Film Festival that have yet to secure a distributor, helping filmmakers take practical steps toward distribution. Participants are offered a preparatory session on how to approach distribution meetings, alongside opportunities for one-on-one business meetings with industry professionals.

※ NEXT LINK is open to directors with films screening at SIFF2026 and to industry professionals, and requires pre-registration.

※ Please refer to the Notice for further details.

How can we keep a film we love close to us for a long time? We watch it again and again, recommend it to others, and write down the lines that stayed with us. And sometimes that affection becomes something we can hold in our hands: objects we hang from our bags, set on our desks, and use and touch in the course of everyday life. Film merchandise is one more way for a love that begins on the screen to carry over into daily life. This year, Creator’s Workroom welcomes YOON Ja-young, head of the film merchandise studio TOKAK, which gives that affection a shape.

In 2016, the comic Yesterday, I Met Tokkiri at the Cinema began its run in NOW, the Seoul Independent Film Festival’s independent film magazine. Exactly ten years later, YOON Ja-young, who once met readers on its pages as Tokkiri, comes to Creator’s Workroom as head of TOKAK. NOW ceased publication in 2019, but YOON’s bond with the festival lives on in TOKAK’s merchandise, which audiences embrace year after year. Over those ten years, from Tokkiri to TOKAK, what discoveries and choices shaped the journey? To follow TOKAK’s work is also to trace back the making of the very merchandise we have so happily picked up.

In this session, director LIM Oh-jeong sits down with YOON Ja-young to open up TOKAK’s working process and the experiences gathered along the way. Where does what filmmakers want to capture meet what film lovers want to keep? Through their conversation, we will hear about the attempts and the trial and error that go into turning an idea into a finished object, along with the joys and struggles of turning what you love into your work. From a story that begins in the cinema to its arrival in the everyday lives of audiences, this is a chance to take a closer look at the hands that wrap up the screen.

Through new filmmakers, new forms and bold experiments in storytelling, independent cinema has broadened the diversity and creativity of South Korean film. Public support has been a vital foundation for this work, and what independent cinema has achieved reaches beyond individual films to the growth of South Korean cinema as a whole.

Yet an independent film’s journey does not end once it is made. Equally important is that it meets its audience and travels into the wider world through diverse channels of distribution. Screenings and awards at festivals are only a beginning. Filmmaking can only be sustained when a film goes on to find audiences through distribution, generate revenue, and enable the production of subsequent works. Building on the creative foundations secured through public support, we must therefore actively seek out new points of contact with the market and the industry, through diverse approaches to production, investment, distribution, and exhibition.

This forum approaches independent cinema as an integral part of the film industry, examining the entire journey from development and production to post-festival distribution, revenue models, platforms, diverse distribution channels, and entry into wider markets. It will explore how films can find approaches to the market that suit their individual qualities while preserving independent production practices and distinctive creative voices, opening up a discussion of the possibilities beyond making an independent film. By sharing experiences with key figures in the film industry, we hope to create a space to imagine a sustainable future for independent cinema.

Films cannot be made on passion alone. To keep creating, filmmakers need more than production budgets. They need to be able to earn a living from their work, to have stable working conditions, and to rely on a distribution and exhibition environment that can carry films to audiences. As the production and investment landscape of South Korean cinema shifts, it is time to look closely at how public funds for film promotion are raised and allocated, and whether they truly reach the people making films.

In keeping with ‘Digging,’ this year’s slogan for the Seoul Independent Film Festival, the forum begins with how filmmakers live and how films are actually made, and digs down to the structures that determine support programs and funding. Through four maps—people, production, support, and funding—we will explore the relationship between the challenges experienced in the field and existing support policies, tracing the connections and gaps between them.

From there, the forum reviews the priorities that policy and support should set, not only for production and investment but also for distribution and exhibition, audience development, regional cinema, and the ability of filmmakers to sustain their careers. It will go on to propose directions for the 2028 film promotion budget and agendas for institutional reform, and discuss how the needs of those working in film can be built into the budget-making process.

In 2026, as long-standing cinemas close their doors one after another, talk of a crisis in the film industry has never felt more real. The audience for South Korean independent cinema is visibly changing as well. In the 2010s, this audience turned films such as Bleak Night, Socialphobia, and The King of Jokgu into hits. Now the viewers who discovered the pleasures of South Korean independent film, saw its potential, and championed it are steadily slipping away. In 2026, South Korean independent films average fewer than 3,000 admissions, far behind the average for international arthouse releases. The consumer trends of an era of ‘pop-ups’ and ‘limited’ editions have not spared the audiences of South Korean independent and art cinema either. Festival word of mouth once carried a film through to its theatrical release in a virtuous cycle, and long runs gave it the staying power to reach ever more viewers. Both strategies now belong to a distant past. Today’s audiences show so little interest in or affection for South Korean independent cinema that the word ‘passing’ has come up to describe it. This forum brings together four marketers who have handled this year’s releases and who have worked on the front lines of releasing South Korean independent films from the early 2010s to the present, to hear what they have to say about where South Korean independent cinema stands today.

Can a married couple make films together? Of course—film history offers no shortage of examples. But can a couple make a film entirely on their own? Is that even possible, physically or psychologically? Can one learn to accept, with good grace, the moment when one’s closest companion in life turns into one’s fiercest filmmaking partner? Apparently so. We already know of singular, inventive cases in which a couple has turned their own home into a set and taken on every role themselves: directing, writing, cinematography, editing, acting, and producing. These are the films of two production companies whose names alone sound affectionate: SARANGHAJA (“Let’s Love”) and Harmonious Films.

SARANGHAJA has steadily built a production method all its own, adapting to limited circumstances and modest means with flexibility and humor. Its work runs from Can We Just Love, in which PARK Songyeol and WON Hyangra play lovers, through Hot in Day, Cold at Night and Kike Will Hit a Home Run, in which they play a married couple, to their latest film, Beyond Love’s Horizon, which welcomes the baby born to them into the picture. Harmonious Films began with Our Midnight, directed by LIM Jungeun, and went on to The Element of Hope and The Element of Despair, directed by LEE Weon-young. With The Glimmering, for which the crew was pared down to LEE Weon-young and LIM Jungeun alone, the company dared to boldly imagine, and meticulously build, the full sweep of a world’s sorrow from the barest of means. The two film companies differ in temperament, worldview, direction, imagination, and rhythm, yet they share one conviction born of experience: as long as there is a camera, two people are more than enough. A spirit of thrift can lead to cinematic plenitude.

This talk forum offers a chance to hear, through the vivid, concrete stories of these two communities, how partners in life become close collaborators in cinema, and how the conditions of life give rise to a cinematic form born of necessity, one that finally takes shape as a film.

How do we turn stories of fact and imagination into cinematic images?

Do fiction and nonfiction, for all their differences, share any lasting principles of cinematic storytelling?

Is there a clear line that separates documentary from fiction?

Through three documentaries with narrative structures that are at once similar and distinct, this forum explores narratives, characters, and society, opening up a conversation about the stories that cinema and our times need.

HEO Chul-nyung and JEONG Sae-byeol, cinematographers of Edhi Alice: Take

JO Byeong-hun, cinematographer of T1 Rose Together

KIM Seul-gi, cinematographer of My Dearest Fu Bao

Together, they will discuss how they translated stories into cinematic images, their individual approaches to storytelling, and the ways they cross or expand their boundaries.

We hope this forum will be an opportunity to deepen our understanding of documentary and to reflect on cinema, cinematography, people, and society—to ask questions and seek answers together.

※ Cine Talk will be taken place after the end of the Screening.

※ Cine Talk will be taken place after the end of the Screening.

※ Cine Talk will be taken place after the end of the Screening.

※ Cine Talk will be taken place after the end of the Screening.

※ There will be two intermissions during the screening.

※ Various commemorative gifts will be available through event activities.

During the festival, look for one of 15 lucky envelopes hidden around the venue.

Audiences who find an envelope can exchange it for a gift from CREMA CLUB at the souvenir booth.

Add the excitement of a treasure hunt to the joy of watching films!

※ Please check your winning envelope at the Souvenir Booth before exchanging it.

After completing SIFF 2026 survey on-site, receive 1 can of Hanmac beer from staff.

※ This event item will be provided upon entrance.

Audiences who ask questions during Q&A sessions will receive either

60-day subscription to CREMA CLUB, Idea Snack or BEANS ROAD Coffee Beans (random).

From Thursday to Sunday, create special memories at SIFF2026 LUNA PHOTO Photozone!

※ This event may end early each day due to limited quantities.