South Korean author Lee Chang-dong will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s Malaysia International Film Festival, the Kuala Lumpur festival announced this week, as it unveiled the program for its ninth edition, taking place from July 18 to 25.
Announcing the honor, MIFFest president Joan Goh described Lee as “a filmmaker whose work continues to resonate across cultures and generations through his honesty, compassion, and deep understanding of humanity,” adding that his films “remind us of cinema’s unique ability to inspire empathy, provoke thought, and connect us through shared human experiences.”
The Malaysian festival will include a special tribute to Lee, including a showcase of two of his early landmarks, Peppermint candy (1998) and oasis (2002).
A revered figure across Asian cinema and a fixture at major European festivals, Lee has built a reputation – across just six films over three decades – as an auteur, revered more by critics and cinephiles than by the box office. His films explore grief, social alienation, and moral ambiguity with a literary intensity that reflects the beginning of his career as a fiction writer. His path to cinema came noticeably late. A former high school teacher, he first made his name as a novelist in the 1980s, writing novels steeped in the pathos and political turmoil of the years of South Korea’s military dictatorship, and did not direct a feature film until he was over forty. In an unlikely turn, he stepped away from cinema in the early 2000s to serve as South Korea’s Minister of Culture and Tourism, a cabinet position he held from 2003 to 2004. President Roh Moo-hyun.
But every new Lee Chang-dong film was an event on the festival circuit. oasis (2002) won the Best Director Award in Venice; Secret sunlight (2007) won the Best Actress Award at Cannes for its star Jeon Do-yeon; hair (2010) won the Cannes Screenplay Prize; and burn (2018), his film adaptation of Haruki Murakami, won the International Critics’ Award at the festival and became the first Korean film to be shortlisted for the Foreign Language Academy Award.
Lee’s literary profile has also been on the rise in the West recently: A Snow Day and Other Storieshis first collection of novels in English, was published by Penguin Press in February 2025. He is finally close to returning to the screen with Potential love (working title), now in post-production. Backed by Netflix, the drama is widely tipped to be a contender for the Venice Film Festival this fall.
Under the theme “Resonance,” this year’s MIFFest will screen 65 films from 35 countries. The film begins with the world premiere of Malaysian director Arif Zulkarnain Baja: Tomorrow does not belong to anyone And close with Yellow lettersBerlinale Golden Bear winner İlker Catak. Chinese action star and director Wu Jing will receive a separate “Excellent Achievement in Cinema” award, accompanied by a screening of his epic “Wuxia.” Blades of the Guardians: Rising Wind in the Desert.
The festival’s competition, the Malaysia Golden World Awards, features 10 films by emerging directors – including the directorial debut of Taiwanese star Xu Qi. Girl – A judging committee headed by Indian director Anurag Kashyap. Sidebars range from a Hong Kong screening to early films in Korean and Russian cinema, as well as an A-Lister section featuring the latest works by Takashi Miike and Spain’s Oliver Lax.
MIFFest takes place from July 18 to 25 in Kuala Lumpur, with the Global Gold Awards being handed out on the closing night.
