Danish director Frederik Sølberg’s “ Hana Korea ” emerged as a crowd favorite at this year’s Busan International Film Festival , taking home the Flash Forward competition audience award for its nuanced portrayal of North Korean defection and resettlement.

The film, which world premiered at BIFF, represents a creative journey that began with a chance encounter in Seoul and culminated in an equal Danish-Korean co-production that challenges conventional filmmaking models.

“Fifteen years ago, I traveled to South Korea for the first time,” Sølberg recalls of the project’s genesis. “On my first evening in Seoul, I walked into a restaurant and struck up a conversation with two Korean men who had taken part in some kind of war memorial event. Their English was limited, but they managed to ex

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