The 4th PPP, which grows in scale and substance every year, opens today through 15th at the Commodore Hotel. It has become the biggest pre-market for Asian films, where the promising Asian directors and producers can find potential co-producing and/or co-financing partners.

The biggest characteristic of this year's PPP is that many famous Asian directors are participating, such as Shohei Imamura, Lee Chang-dong, and Kim Ki-duk and so on. Shohei Imamura hopes to raise 70% of the budget for his next project . New promising directors like Lin Cheng Sheng of , Lee Sang-il of , and Bakhtiar Khoudoinazarov of are also coming to Pusan to present their new projects.

You can find master directors, leading directors, and even new directors all at PPP. 150 films wanted to participate in the PPP this year, which is 50% more than last year.

Also, the Commodore Hotel will be crowded with the 800 guests and buyers, which is 200 more than last year, in spite of the terrorist attack on the US and the US retaliation. There are major US companies like Miramax, Warner Brothers and Columbia as well as M6 and Pyramid from Europe. It is also because the projects that were previously introduced by PPP had won awards from various film festivals.

Industry Center in PPP provides Korean Distributors with screening rooms and meeting rooms to meet foreign distributors. There is a new program called New Directors In Focus(NDIF) for finding new promising Korean directors. The directors preparing their first feature films can present their projects to investors and productions. This includes director Cho Eun-ryung, Kang Man-jin and Lee In-kyun.

According to the promoters of PPP, this will be a good chance for new directors and productions who have little information about the film industry. Jung Tae-young, head director of PPP predicts good outcomes saying that ?he Hollywood majors are showing much interest in this year? events, by this, I think that the world-wide film industries have a growing interest on the Asian films.

Moon Seok