Ministry of SMEs and Startups Hosts Digital Film Festival Featuring 'Small Business Owners' COVID-19 Overcoming Stories'

Baemin and Naver Sponsored '1st Sodam Film Festival'

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced on the 10th that it will hold the 'Sodam Film Festival,' a digital film festival for small business owners, for the first time this year. Photo by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Heeyoon] The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced on the 10th that it will hold the ‘Sodam Film Festival,’ a digital film festival for small business owners, for the first time this year.

Sponsored by Naver and Baedal Minjok, the ‘Sodam Film Festival’ is open to all citizens. The submission categories are divided into general and youth divisions (high school students and below). Participants are required to produce a video under one minute on the theme of ‘Small Business Owners’ Overcoming COVID-19’ and submit it through the Sodam Film Festival website.

The Ministry explained that participants can submit unlimited entries depicting various stories of small business owners overcoming COVID-19 through digital adoption such as live commerce (real-time broadcast sales), smart supermarkets, cases of excellent quarantine practices leading to safe stores, or overcoming management crises.

Professional judges including directors Oh Ki-hwan of the films Gift and Fashion King, Lim Dae-woong of House on the Time and Scary Story, and Park Jin-young of Rose of Betrayal will participate in the judging. The winners will be selected based on 60% expert evaluation and 40% public online voting. Prize money totaling 30 million KRW will be awarded (Grand Prize: 5 million KRW for the general division, 3 million KRW for the youth division). The Minister of SMEs and Startups will also present awards to the grand prize and four excellence award winners.

The winning works will be showcased on the Sodam Film Festival website and the Ministry’s Naver TV channel. They will also be actively used as promotional content to encourage the digitalization of small business owners in the future.

Kim Jung-hyun, the Ministry’s public relations officer, said, “We planned this Sodam Film Festival to discover and spread excellent cases of small business owners overcoming COVID-19, delivering a positive message of overcoming crises and promoting digitalization among small business owners. We ask for active participation in the Sodam Film Festival with diverse stories from small but strong small business owners.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.