Celebrated director Park Chan-wook’s star-studded murder comedy No Other Choice opened Asia’s biggest film festival on Wednesday, which is launching its first fully-fledged competition line-up as South Korea projects its soft power worldwide. Programme director Karen Park said the line-up was designed to honour Asian cinema in the way it wishes to be understood. “I believe it is meaningful that an Asian film festival, which understands Asian culture and its linguistic and historical contexts, evaluates Asian films and offers its own perspectives on them,” she said. South Korean director Park Chan-wook at the festival’s opening ceremony. The opening film marks a shift from last year’s choice of Netflix’s period war drama Uprising, which drew criticism in South Korea’s cinema community given BIFF’s tradition of championing theatrical films.