By Charles Audouin

Video = Festival's official YouTube channel

This year's DMZ International Documentary Film Festival (DMZ Docs) runs from Sept. 10-16 at movie theaters in and around the Gyeonggi-do Province cities of Paju and Goyang.

Launched in 2009, DMZ Docs has transformed the site of national division and conflict into a space for dialogue, promoting through cinema the values of peace, reconciliation and coexistence to the world.

Under the slogan "Peace Is Not Silent," this year's festival is screening 147 documentaries from 52 countries. The works are divided into sections including International Competition and Frontier, Korean Competition, and the non-competitive Verite, Docufiction, Essay and Expanded.

Director Lee Myung-se, who directed the festival's official trailer, told a news conference on Aug. 18 at Chungmu Arts Center in Seoul's Jung-gu District, "The trailer might feel somewhat dark, but I wanted to raise this question: Isn't now the time for us to remain vigilant?"

Hwang Yun's work "Haje" is the festival's opening film. Over the course of eight years, the documentary follows the residents of Haje, a small fishing village in Gunsan, Jeollabuk-do Province, who were evicted due to the Saemangeum reclamation project and the expansion of a U.S. military base. The work explores the values of life, peace and care.

"I realized that this marginalized village, so remote that I wondered how many people even knew it existed, was disappearing from our country's map and history because it received no media attention," Hwang said on the background of the film. "As a documentary director living in Gunsan, I felt I couldn't simply turn away from or overlook this village."

Closing the festival is French director Christophe Dimitri Reveille's "Che Guevara: The Last Companions," which is about members of the Cuban revolutionary leader's guerrilla unit.

"I believe Che Guevara is a political figure who deserves a reintroduction to our times, so we boldly selected this film as the closing work," said Oh Dong Jin, the event's director and chair of the executive committee. "This year's DMZ Docs features many progressive voices."

The festival boasts a rich lineup of programs. One highlights 13 films directed over the past two decades by Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari, while another screens 15 eco-documentaries exploring the relationship between humans and nature.

To mark the 140th anniversary of bilateral relations between Korea and France, 10 films by French director Raymond Depardon will be screened. His works have emphasized human faces, labor and vanishing rural life.

The DMZ Docs Forum will discuss topics including future strategies for domestic and political documentaries and the dilemmas surrounding cultural boycotts.

caudouin@korea.kr