european women+ filmmakers in the spotlight at biff

European Film Promotion (EFP) returns to the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) with EUROPE! VOICES OF WOMEN+ IN FILM, its dedicated label and programme for European women and genderqueer filmmakers, presented in partnership with the Sydney Film Festival, BIFF and Festival do Rio. At BIFF 2026, nine films officially selected by the festival are being highlighted by EFP through targeted promotion and industry outreach, bringing distinctive European voices into focus at one of Asia’s key international film festivals running from 6 to 15 October 2026.

The nine highlighted titles span period drama, documentary and contemporary fiction, combining strong political perspectives with highly individual cinematic approaches and bold imaginative storytelling. They address questions of freedom and responsibility, memory and history, family and intimacy, repeatedly connecting personal experiences with wider social and political realities. Four of the films are feature debuts.

Set amid the upheaval following Denmark’s liberation in 1945, May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown (Denmark, Sweden, Latvia) follows a young housemaid preparing to marry her wealthy employer while concealing a relationship she had with a German soldier during the occupation. El-Toukhy uses Marie’s threatened social ascent to explore how the end of war brings not only liberation but also judgement, instability and a new struggle for survival. The film won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, making el-Toukhy the first Danish woman filmmaker to receive the honour, while Mathilde Arcel was awarded the Coppa Volpi for Best Actress.

In Everytime (Austria, Germany), Sandra Wollner follows a family struggling with grief and guilt after the sudden death of teenage Jessie. When Jessie’s boyfriend re-enters their lives, Wollner gradually shifts from everyday realism into a hallucinatory world where memory, time and fantasy merge, opening up a psychological space in which loss refuses to disappear.

Set during the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, Margherita Ferrari’s feature debut FÖA – Once Upon a Future (Italy) centres on 18-year-old and heavily pregnant Nicole, who opens her door to protesters fleeing the unrest outside. Their unexpected encounter brings the young woman’s private world into direct collision with a political moment that would mark both history and a generation.

In Marie Kreutzer’s Gentle Monster (Austria, Germany, France), concert pianist Lucy’s family life is shattered when her husband is arrested, and she is forced to confront the possibility that he has committed an unimaginable crime. Staying closely with Lucy rather than sensationalising its disturbing subject, Kreutzer explores the unbearable uncertainty that suddenly casts doubt not only on the family’s future but also on its happiest memories.

With her feature debut La Gradiva (France, Italy), Marine Atlan takes a group of French high-school students to Naples and Pompeii, where desire, anger and uncertainty increasingly come to the surface. Set against the traces of ancient catastrophe, their journey becomes a vivid generational portrait in which Atlan brings past and present, strangeness and familiarity into dialogue.

In I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming (Germany, Ukraine) Isabelle Stever follows a young queer Ukrainian couple whose love and sense of identity are tested by one partner’s gender transition and Russia’s full-scale invasion. Told through their struggle to stay together, the film keeps the brutality of war constantly latent yet terribly real, creeping into everyday life through voices on the radio, displacement and harrowing allusions to violence.

Set in Kabul shortly before the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, Shahrbanoo Sadat’s No Good Men (Germany, Norway, France, Denmark, Afghanistan) follows Naru, the only camerawoman at a television station and a mother fighting to retain custody of her son, whose growing connection with journalist Qodrat challenges her view of the men around her. By intertwining this intimate story with Kabul’s final days of freedom, Sadat also questions the idea of a liberated pre-Taliban society and exposes the patriarchal structures already shaping women’s lives.

In Rehearsals for a Revolution (Czech Republic, Spain), Iranian actor, activist and filmmaker Pegah Ahangarani uses five portraits of relatives and mentors, alongside family archives, home movies and protest footage, to trace more than four decades of Iranian history. Personal memory and political resistance become inseparable as Ahangarani frames these individual struggles as “rehearsals” for a broader consciousness and the possibility of future change.

Sarah Arnold’s feature debut Too Many Beasts (France) turns a bitter conflict between farmers and hunters in the French countryside into a darkly comic detective story, as an investigation into a disappearance uncovers increasingly tangled local interests. Drawing on closely observed realities of hunting culture and its economy, Arnold pushes the genre into deliberately caustic and offbeat territory.

Also selected for BIFF this year are A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra by Jacqueline Lentzou (Greece, Germany, France), A Girl’s Story by Judith Godrèche (France), Birds of War by Janay Boulos and Abd Alkader Habak (United Kingdom, Syria, Lebanon), My Wife Cries by Angela Schanalec (Germany, France) and Titanic Ocean by Konstantina Kotzamani (Greece, Germany, Romania, Japan, Spain, France).

BIFF programmer SEO Seunghee noted, “While reviewing films for this year’s festival, I observed that films by European women directors have become increasingly prominent among the strong titles we have considered, both in number and in quality. Moreover, the fact that four of the nine invited films are feature debuts is also an indicator of the generational shift taking place in European cinema. Our ongoing collaboration with EFP has become a reliable channel for discovering and validating outstanding films and filmmakers, and the results are fully reflected in this year’s lineup. Through continued collaboration with EFP, BIFF will continue to serve as a platform for introducing outstanding European films to Asian audiences at the earliest opportunity.”

“With EUROPE! VOICES OF WOMEN+ IN FILM, EFP and its member organisations join forces to give distinctive European voices greater international visibility. Busan is an important platform for bringing these filmmakers and their work into dialogue with audiences and industry professionals in Asia. By combining the festival’s selection with EFP’s targeted promotion and networking, we are proud to support underrepresented voices and create opportunities for the next generation of women+ filmmakers,” says EFP’s Managing Director Irina Ignatiew-Lemke.

Six European filmmakers — Jacqueline Lentzou (A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra), Judith Godrèche (A Girl’s Story), Margherita Ferrari (FÖA – Once Upon a Future), Isabelle Stever (I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming), Konstantina Kotzamani (Titanic Ocean) and May el-Toukhy (Woman Unknown) — are confirmed to attend the Busan International Film Festival in person to present their films and engage with audiences. In addition, BIFF and EFP are co-hosting a networking get-together for European filmmakers, alongside the panel discussion Women Directors: Taking the Scene. The panel brings together European filmmakers Jacqueline Lentzou, May el-Toukhy and Margherita Ferrari for an exchange with filmmakers from China, Afghanistan and Iran: Chinese director Michelle Zhou with Big Little Things (Hong Kong SAR/USA), Afghan filmmaker Zainab Entezar with 771 Days (Afghanistan), and Iranian director Marjan Khosravi with Dreams of the Wild Oaks (Iran/France/Spain). Together, they will explore a diverse range of perspectives on women’s experiences, voices and presence in contemporary cinema.

EUROPE! VOICES OF WOMEN+ IN FILM, in collaboration with the Sydney Film Festival, the Busan International Film Festival and the Festival do Rio is made possible thanks to the support of Creative Europe – the MEDIA Programme of the European Union. The national film promotion institutes supporting this year's edition at BIFF are: Austrian Films, Cinecittà (Italy), Czech Film Center, Danish Film Institute, German Films and Unifrance. Cineuropa is the programme’s media partner.