The annual Puchon (Bucheon) International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan), considered the largest genre film fest in Asia, opens this Thursday with 229 horror, fantasy, mystery and animated films from 44 countries.

This year’s PiFan celebrates its 17th edition and includes a total of 53 world premieres. Its opener is Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman’s latest animated film “The Congress.” The filmmaker, who is best known for his 2008 animated documentary “Waltz with Bashir” ― which dealt with his own lost memories involved with the 1982 Lebanon War ― created “The Congress” loosely based on Polish writer Stainslaw Lem’s novel “The Futurological Congress.”

The film deals with an aging, out-of-work actress who agrees to undergo full body imaging, which is then digitalized to create a digital actress. Her decision brings a number of unexpected consequences. 

This year’s closer is Korean director Kim Byung-woo’s “The Terror Live.” The thriller stars actor Ha Jung-woo as a prominent news anchor who receives a call from a terrorist after he bombs Seoul’s Mapo Bridge.

The festival’s feature lineup includes a total of 12 genre films this year. Notable films include Canadian director Vincenzo Natali’s mystery-horror “Haunter,” about a ghost of a young girl who tries to save someone from suffering her same fate, and Mexican director Sebastian Hofmann’s “Halley,” about a man whose body is decomposing while alive and he attempts to hide it using make-up and perfume.

The lineup also includes popular Korean film “Secretly Greatly,” which tells the story of three young, attractive North Korean spies who disguise themselves as a rock musician, a high school student, and an intellectually challenged young man in South Korea. The film is based on the popular 2010 webtoon series by Korean artist HUN.

This year’s edition also offers an opportunity for the viewers to revisit some of the classics of genre films. One of the films in the section titled “PiFan Classics” is Italian director Robert Rossellini’s 1952 film “The Machine That Kills Bad People,” a tale of a young photographer living in a small fishing town who one day receives a special camera that has the power to kill “evil-doers.” The section also includes Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 film “Dial M for Murder,” starring Ray Milland, Robert Cummings and Grace Kelly. The film, which tells the story of a man who arranges to have his wife murdered, will be screened in 3-D during the upcoming edition.

Local Japanese animation fans will be excited to see director Makoto Shinkai’s latest work “The Garden of Words.” The short film depicts a romance between a 15-year-old boy and a 27-year-old woman, and is noted for its stunning visual imagery.

The upcoming edition also includes a number of cutting-edge documentaries that deal with controversial issues, including London-based director Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The Act of Killing,” which is about the notorious Indonesian killings of 1965-1966, as well as Polish director Michal Marczak’s film “F*ck for Forest,” a film about a Berlin-based NGO that sells homemade porn movies online to raise money for the environment.

This year’s PiFan runs from July 18 to July 28 in different venues in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province. For more information, call (032) 327-6313 or visit www.pifan.com.

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)