Busan Film Festival Asian Content Film Market, this year’s transaction volume is 98 billion won

This year's Busan International Film Festival Asian Content & Film Market (ACFM) transaction volume was found to have reached approximately 98 billion won.

According to Southern Post, a research service company on the 14th, ACFM's sales transaction amount this year was calculated to be $73.39 million (about 98 billion won).

This is a 15.8% increase from ACFM’s $63.37 million in 2024.

ACFM, held together with the Busan International Film Festival, is a venue for trading Asian content intellectual property (IP) and discussing joint production and investment plans. This year's event was held at BEXCO's 2nd exhibition hall in Busan from the 10th to the 13th of last month.

The number of participants in this year's ACFM is 30,484 people from 58 countries, an increase of 15.3% compared to 2024 (26,435 people from 51 countries). Of these, 2,261 people, including industry officials, registered for market badges.

The per capita expenditure estimated based on the results of a survey of ACFM participants was 1,417,000 won, a significant increase from 2024 (787,000 won).

The production inducement effect derived by adding the event budget to the participant spending and multiplying by the production inducement coefficient was 92 billion won. This is almost twice the amount in 2024 (KRW 47.1 billion).

Among ACFM participants, 65.0% were from overseas, and the average length of stay in Busan was 5.4 days. The amount spent by participants from overseas in Busan was estimated at 1.86 million won per person.

In the survey asking about business performance (multiple responses allowed), 'discovering new partners' was the most common (67.6%), followed by introduction of IP (42.8%), specific discussions on co-production and investment (30.3%), negotiation of prices and conditions (16.9%), and signing of contracts and MOUs (9.0%).

The results of Southern Post's survey were announced at a discussion held at the Busan Film Industry Center on the 12th, hosted by People Power Party lawmaker Jeong Yeon-wook, hosted by the Busan International Film Festival, and sponsored by Busan City.

At this meeting, Rep. Jeong pointed out, "National support for ACFM has been reduced by less than half from 1.3 billion won in 2023 to 600 million won this year, and the share of government funds in the film festival budget is less than 10%."

Kim Hong-jun, professor emeritus at Korea National University of Arts, said in his presentation that the budget structure of the Busan International Film Festival should be changed and suggested, "Instead of the current method of receiving subsidies every year through the Korean Film Council's international film festival support contest, there is a need to institutionalize it by establishing a new support item directly in the general accounting of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism."