The Eighth London East Asia Film Festival(LEAFF) will kick off for a 12-day run next Wednesday at the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square Cinema.

The festival’s executive committee announced on Friday that the event will screen a total of 49 films from South Korea, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines and Tibet.

South Korean films were selected for both the opening and closing of the festival.

The festival will open with the first international screening of the film “Boys,” about a true robbery and murder case from 1999 in North Jeolla Province, directed by director Chung Ji-young, who marks the 40th anniversary since his debut this year with his first picture in four years.

“Concrete Utopia” directed by Um Tae-hwa was selected for the closing gala. A survival film set in the only apartment building left standing after a massive earthquake in Seoul, the movie has drawn some three-point-84 million moviegoers in South Korea since it hit theaters in August.

As a special section, LEAFF organized “Retrospective: Director Chung Ji-young” in which eight of Chung’s major works will be screened, including “North Korean Partisan in South Korea” and “White Badge.”