The Busan International Film Festival has selected Kim Jong-kwan’s The Table: Day and Night, a tender drama about four couples who experience romantic moments in the same Seoul cafe, as the opening film of its 31st edition. The drama will world premiere at the Busan Cinema Center on Oct. 6, the festival announced Wednesday. 

Kim has built his reputation in the Korean film industry with a flair for elegantly constructed short stories. He won the jury prize at the Mise-en-scène Short Film Festival for his 2004 debut How to Operate a Polaroid Camera, and has returned repeatedly to anthology work — directing segments of the Netflix series Persona (2019), which featured filmmakers building shorts around K-pop star IU, as well as Vestige (2022) and The Killers (2024).

Even his features have tended to operate like collections of interlaced shorts. The Table: Day and Night appears to be a loose follow-up to his 2016 feature The Table, a chamber piece featuring four women discussing their past and present romantic entanglements at the same table in a Seoul cafe over the course of a single day. That feature premiered at BIFF in 2016 and became one of his best-known works.

The Table: Day and Night follows four couples as they experience sparks of romance in a Seoul coffee shop over the summer and autumn months. Mostly conversation based, the film depicts a chance encounter between Yoo-jin (Kim Minha) and Hyeon-oh (Joo Jong-hyuk); an unexpected reunion between Sang-mi (Han Sun-hwa) and Young-min (Chang Ryul), who were friends in middle school and discover a fresh bond; a rush of creative chemistry between web novelist Hye-jin (Shim Eun-kyung) and indie filmmaker Dong-nam (Lee Hee-jun); and a bittersweet moment between idol trainee Na-kyeong (Jeon So-young) and her boyfriend Jong-su (Kim Dong-hwi). 

In its announcement, BIFF described its choice of curtain-raiser as “an elegant and assured film in which the cinematic interests, style, perspective, and world that Kim Jong-kwan has persistently explored as a filmmaker reach a provisional culmination.”

“Without relying on excessive setups or dramatic turns, it greatest merit lies in how thoughtfully it captures the unique inner voices and emotions of its characters, as well as the subtle shifts in their relationships,” the festival added. 

One of the film’s stars, Kim Minha of Pachinko fame, will also host Busan’s opening ceremony, where Michelle Yeoh will be honored as the event’s Asian Filmmaker of the Year, Ann Hui will receive the Chanel-backed Camellia Award, and Kim Dong-ho, the festival’s own founder, will be presented with the Korean Cinema Award. The 31st Busan International Film Festival runs Oct. 6-15, with the Asian Contents & Film Market held Oct. 10-13. 

EXCLUSIVE: Former NBCUniversal marketing guru Kevin Harrington has launched a new entertainment marketing agency dubbed Patrick Patrick. 

The company, which quietly launched earlier this year, is already working with major clients such as Netflix, Universal Pictures and AMC on strategic and 360-degree campaigns.

Harrington, who was previously Senior Director, Planning at NBC for Scripted and Unscripted, said his new company is built on a simple belief: Entertainment marketing deserves the same strategic discipline long applied to the world’s biggest consumer brands. 

Prior to NBC, Harrington spent a decade at agencies including Saatchi & Saatchi, Anomaly and Johannes Leonardo, leading campaigns for clients such as General Mills, Google, Adidas, Amazon, Hershey’s, Duracell, Volkswagen and Heineken. 

He then pivoted into the entertainment sector, working at NBCUniversal where he led marketing strategy for major cultural moments and franchises, including SNL50, where he led the marketing strategy and 360-degree campaign for SNL50: The Homecoming Concert and SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night.

Harrington also worked on Love Island U.S., where he led the full repositioning for Love Island U.S. Season 4’s move from CBS to Peacock, then led series and social strategy for Season 7, which hit the number 1 trending topic on social at launch and the number 1 spot in streaming across all platforms in the summer of 2025. Additionally, he wrote the original positioning strategy for Poker Face Season 1 and returned to lead strategy for Season 2. He also wrote the positioning strategy for The Office spinoff The Paper.

Patrick Patrick, which Harrington said will focus on “everything but the trailer and key art”, will combine the rigor of brand strategy with the “cultural intuition” of entertainment marketing, an approach designed to help studios and streamers cut through a crowded content landscape.

The company, which now has a collective of 15 creative strategists that it works with on an ongoing basis, is currently working on multiple series with Netflix, a film with Universal and an undisclosed project with AMC. 

“I really believe that what used to work in entertainment marketing doesn’t work anymore,” Harrington told Deadline. “The industry has changed so much but marketing and marketing strategy has not kept up with it. I feel like the industry is really in need of a fresh perspective and a different way of looking at things.”

He continues: “In entertainment, it’s easy to assume people are going to care about our teaser, trailer, social post or activation just because of the associated talent, IP, directors or story. Twenty years ago, when it was 20 channels competing neatly against each other, fair. Now, when it’s streamers vs. TV networks vs social media networks in a massively complex content landscape, you’ve got to get a lot more strategic about how you position your content to break through.

“I started my career working on some of the biggest brands in the world – Pampers, Duracell, Volkswagen, General Mills and Google. They taught me a cutthroat level of strategic and creative rigor that was necessary to get people to notice and care. I found that when I applied that level of rigor coupled with the inherent intrigue of entertainment on properties like SNL, Love Island and more, it was a formula that really worked. So I started Patrick Patrick to bring that magic to more streamers, networks and studios.”