Baff

ALL BECAUSE WE’RE HOOKED

With empty eyes. That’s how we would like to start off the BAFF each year. Empty to later be filled, with eagerness and even excess, with the cinema that each year we expect to quench our thirst for the new and the good. It’s hard. It’s also hard not to give into self-citation, repetition, the loop. But you make an effort. Maybe the reason is that we do it all because we’re hooked. Hooked because a festival like the BAFF is put together from effort, dedication, commitment and risk. In other words, only because we’re hooked. If not, there’s just no understanding it. What do I know, as Messi would say. Because maybe, deep down we’re delighted to have met each other. To be here. To do what we want. And hell, to share it with the BAFF’s audience.

The effort if huge. Now it’s been said. And sometimes it reaches the edge of the abyss. Seriously. (A few periods stuck in there, otherwise later they say they can’t breathe). It’s an effort because it’s hard to convince just anyone that the names the BAFF brings together in its Official Selection – but also in the rest of its sections – are simply the best. That’s what we think so that’s the way we want to tell it. The names of the directors who pass through the Official Selection might not ring that much of a bell. Today. But they are all a serious proposal that someone, the BAFF’s committee of sages, has decided to make shine in the festival’s Official Selection. Even the great Hong Sang-soo dares to take them on. But watch out. Because we’ll never tire of saying (the loop, you know...) that hidden in this section of the BAFF are our most personal proposals: those films we believe deserve to take home the Golden Durian and spread the BAFF’s name throughout the world.

S.G.
(With a little help of S.G.)