Jeonju International Film Festival

The JIFF is a comprehensive celebration of film. In the Cinemascape section, master directors will push the horizons of aesthetics with new dramas, documentaries and foreign short films. The Korean Cinema Section - further divided into Korean Feature Competition, Korean Cinema Showcase, Korean Shorts Competition and Local Cinema in Jeonju sections - is a display of the potential of Korean film. The Cinema Palace section is all about the joy of film watching, while Midnight Obsession lets night owls watch films into the morning's light. Stranger than Cinema provides audiences with a chance to check out rarely seen (in Korea and the West) cinema from countries, regions and epochs like Cuba, North Africa and Soviet-era Russia. The festival also hosts retrospectives of internationally respected masters and outdoor screenings where families can meet directors and actors.

The ancient city of Jeonju has long served as the political, economic and cultural center of this region of Korea. It has a long and time-honored association with the Korean traditional performing arts, especially pansori, a form of musical storytelling. One of Korea's premier music festivals, the Jeonju Sori Festival, is held in the autumn. Jeonju is home to Jeonju Hanok Village, one of Korea's largest communities of Korean traditional homes, some of which have been renovated as guest houses and galleries. The city is most famous, however, for its outstanding cuisine, especially the Jeonju bibimbap, a mixed-rice dish that has become a national icon.