BNP Paribas partners with the Seoul International Women’s Film Festival to support female talent discovery and gender equality in the film industry

BNP Paribas announces today that it has participated as an official sponsor to the 25th Seoul International Women’s Film Festival for the fifth consecutive year since 2019. As done in the past four years, the firm has lent its support towards the discovery of female talent in short film production through the ‘BNP Paribas Asian Shorts Award’.

Since 1997, the Seoul International Women’s Film Festival has led the development of the film industry by discovering female filmmakers and sponsoring women’s film projects. It has established its status as the hub of women’s film network in Asia Pacific. A total of 131 films from 50 countries were showcased at the Megabox Sangam World Cup Stadium in Seoul for a total of 7 days from August 24th to the 30th.

At the festival,BNP Paribas supported film <Divertimento>(2022) directed by Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar, was specially screened at the ‘Star Talk’ with director Byun Young-joo and actress Kim A Joong. <Divertimento> is an orchestra that has actually been sponsored by the BNP Paribas Foundation since 2015, and the film showed the audience the passion for twin sisters Zahia and Fettouma’s dreams about music during the founding of the orchestra.

Aymar DE LIEDEKERKE BEAUFORT, Territory Head of BNP Paribas South Korea, said: “I am very happy that we are continuing our support for the festival under a long-term partnership and hope our support can contribute to fostering of female film talent” And added “as the festival is no longer affected by the pandemic, I hope that the festival bring more audience to enjoy the festival.”

Meanwhile, BNP Paribas has been making strong efforts to achieve gender diversity. It has set a target of raising the percentage of female executives on the board to 40% by 2025. In addition, BNP Paribas joined #OneInThreeWomen network and also signed #JamaisSansElles, the social solidarity movement, for the first time among the global financial institutions to support gender equality.