BIFF Square

This guide to BIFF Square in Busan opens with the ritual repeated each autumn since 1996: a director kneeling to press palms into wet cement while festival crowds watch. It traces this stretch of Nampo-dong from a handful of postwar theaters to a strip of some twenty cinemas that made moviegoing the city's favorite night out. You'll hear how the first Busan International Film Festival needed a spiritual home and renamed the block Star Street and Festival Street. Look down as you walk, the handprints and signatures underfoot are real autographs from those who once stood exactly where you are.