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Hair - (Korea, 2005) - Jang Jun-Hwan's 14 minute short about a man with no chest hair. Suffice to say that if you've ever seen his other work, particularly Save the Green Planet, then you know how what starts off comedically funny ends really strangely.
Beetle, the Horn King (Japan, 2005) - 6/10 - This was an entertaining, kitschy sentai film about wrestlers infused with bug DNA through alien technology for the greater scheme of promoting them in an alien's latest and greatest toy marketing scheme. Beetle, the hero with the beetle DNA (product line designed right before the Christmas rush), has escaped from the alien's claws and becomes a wandering hero with a guitar theme and a sombrero. Yuji, a young reporter, falls in love with Beetle and spends the first half of the film looking for him and the second half helping him out. ("He might be in Mask Palace," remarks one wrestler. "What's that?" "It's a beautiful place for luchadores, where the ladies are always pretty and a man in a mask can relax.") The film was probably aimed for kids, but the humor is strangely amusing; the alluring female poison butterfly sics some nerds on the would-be heroes in an attempt to stop them ("These are some nerds I found them on the internet. Go, nerds, kill them all!") Just a fun film, and only an hour long, so it won't kill you.
Welcome to Dongmakgol - (Korea, 2005) - 8.5/10 - This was easily my favorite film of the festival. Set during the Korea war, an unlikely set of events occur near a small village, Dongmakgol: an American pilot, a Captain Smith, crashes into the mountains and survives; two Allied Korean deserters meet up in the woods; and three People's Army Korean soldiers straggle on to Pyongyang, only survivors of their battalion. All three set foot in Dongmakgol. The village, high up in the mountains, is an anomaly; it is so remote and so out of the way that its villagers have no idea a war is happening. The Allied Forces, under the impression that Smith's plane was shot down by Communist forces, prepares to attack with orders to mow down anyone and anything in their way... The film is a wonderful little gem; words just don't do it justice. Watch it if you can.