BUSAN, South Korea: After the fanfare of opening night Asia's premier film festival got down to business in the South Korean port city of Busan Friday with a boundary-busting program of regional cinema. An array of international film stars dazzled on the red carpet as the 15th Pusan International Film Festival kicked off Thursday evening with an outdoor screening of Chinese's director Zhang Yimou's “Under the Hawthorn Tree”. Thousands of screaming fans welcomed South Korean heartthrobs such as Won Bin and Lee Yo-won, while attention also focused on Kim Yun-Jin, star of the hit US TV series “Lost”, Japanese starlet Yu Aoi and Chinese star Tang Wei. Tang told a news conference Friday she believes she has come back a stronger, more mature person – and actress – after the controversy that swirled around her role in director Ang Lee's “Lust, Caution.” Tang had been loath to discuss the subject, but at the press conference held to launch her latest role – in Korean's director Kim Tae-Yong's “Late Autumn” – there was no escaping her past. Tang acknowledged that she had been through some tough times following intense criticism in China over her portrayal in Lee's film of a woman who sleeps with a Japanese sympathizer during World War II. The production also featured Tang in some graphic nude scenes with co-star Tony Leung. “I believe every day I am growing up as a person and as an actress,” Tang said. Director Kim said he believed the controversy had left its mark on the 31-year-old Tang, but he was happy for his own film that it had done so. “My interpretation is that she has really grown up because of the experience of ‘Lust, Caution',” he said. Late Autumn has already created quite a stir in Busan, pairing Tang with South Korean idol Hyun Bin in a tale of two lovelorn foreigners who meet by chance in the American city of Seattle. The festival offers an eclectic line-up of films and special events laid out for the more than 150,000 film lovers expected to flock to town before it closes on Oct. 15. Hollywood heavyweights Oliver Stone and Willem Dafoe are also due in town, along with Bollywood golden couple Aishwarya Rai and her husband Abhishek Bachchan, and French actress Juliette Binoche. The festival was founded to promote Asia's vast independent filmmaking scene and it offers a main jury prize of 30,000 dollars – the New Currents award – to two first or second time Asian directors. This year there are 13 films vying for the award from as far afield as Iraq and Vietnam.
