Republic of Korea - The 5th Olleh International Smartphone Film Festival (South Korea) which offers the Migrant Heroes Prize to the best smartphone film on stories of migrants worldwide is accepting submissions from 1 July till 17 August.

The submission is open to everybody regardless of nationality and age. Any genre – including drama, romance, action, comedy, documentary – is eligible for entry. The lengths of the smartphone films need to be shorts under 10 minutes, extreme shorts under 1 minute, and feature-length films of over 50 minutes.

The Migrant Heroes Prize was created by the collaboration of IOM and Korea Telecom (KT) Corporation, organizer of the Olleh Smartphone Film Festival and the largest communication service provider in the Republic of Korea (ROK). “Olleh” is the brand slogan of KT Corporation.

IOM Seoul has been actively implementing IOM global campaigns in ROK since 2014 to highlight the positive contributions of migrants, which was culminated by a week-long international migrants’ day campaign in December 2014, featuring two of IOM’s global campaigns, #MigrationMeans and Migrants Contribute.

KT, one of the private partners of IOM Seoul, established a Migrant Heroes Prize to support IOM’s Migrant Heroes campaign, a 2015 global awareness campaign which reinforces IOM’s Migrants Contribute campaign launched in 2013 and counters misinformation and negative perceptions of migrants by presenting evidence of success in accessible ways.

“We are delighted to see companies like KT are more willing to collaborate with inter-governmental organizations like ours and help us bring into light the significance of migration issues,” said Miah Park, head of office at IOM Seoul.

“The newly formed partnership between IOM and the Olleh International Smartphone Festival, the world’s biggest smartphone film festival, will facilitate IOM’s role in documenting migrants’ stories and sharing with people from all over the world,” she continued, encouraging worldwide submissions for the Migrant Heroes Prize.

The winner of the Migrant Heroes Prize will receive approximately USD 2,000 and has a chance of also winning the Olleh Grand Prize which is awarded to one superior film from among all selection categories, receiving approximately USD 10,000. The winning films will be screened at a movie theatre in Seoul, South Korea throughout September and October this year.

The Olleh International Smartphone Film Festival was first launched in 2011 in the Republic of Korea, after the iconic filmmaker Park Chan-wook of Oldboy created a short, Night Fishing, on an iPhone 4. The film went on to win a Berlin Golden Bear Award. The Republic of Korea has one of the world's highest penetration rates for smartphones, with more than 80 per cent of the population using the devices.

Last year, a diverse demographic group representing 43 countries, ranging from elementary school students to a 73-year-old man, submitted nearly 1,000 films for the 4th Olleh International Smartphone Festival.

The smartphone, which has become deeply integrated in our lives, is a powerful tool to document the world around us and share it with a wider audience to make social change. As the world’s leading migration agency, IOM is built on the belief that migration benefits all and has been looking for innovative ways to promote positive contributions migrants bring to home and host countries.

For further information, please contact Eunjin Jeong, Tel: +977 980 100 53 22, Email: ejeong@iom.int or Yoojin Kim, Tel: +82 2 6925 1360, Email: ykim@iom.int