Kim Woo-sung performs onstage during “The Rose: Come Back to Me” premiere during the 2025 Tribeca Festival. Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)
Getty Images for Tribeca Festival
The Rose: Come Back To Me will screen three times at the Busan International Film Festival and at additional film festivals worldwide, before its global theatrical release in 2026.
The Korean alt-pop indie band known as The Rose is composed of Woosung, Dojoon, Hajoon, and Taegyeom. From their earliest days,busking in Hongdae, the band has captivated audiences with their distinctive genre-blending sound. Their first full-length album Heal sparked the global Heal Together World Tour, drawing over 90,000 fans and leading to high-profile festival appearances, including headlining the Bacardi Stage at Lollapalooza 2023.
They reached a new milestone with their sophomore album Dual, which debuted on the Billboard 200. Building on this success, The Rose sold more than 150,000 tickets on their Dawn to Dusk Tour and delivered a show-stopping set at Coachella 2024. This year they went on a global tour, promoting their latest album WRLD alongside their documentary The Rose: Come Back to Me, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2025.
“Knowing how dominant Korean culture is globally—from K-Pop Demon Hunters to Parasite—international audiences are all eager to go deeper and learn more” said Diane Quon and Sanjay M. Sharma on behalf of the producing team behind the popular Tribeca doc. “The Rose is as much a music doc as it is a coming-of-age story—about a group of friends finding their own way through the world. It’s a story of heartbreak and healing, conformity and individuality, and ultimately about the transformative power of music around the world.”
Hajoon, Taegyeom, Kim Woo-sung and Dojoon perform onstage during “The Rose: Come Back to Me” premiere.. (Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)
Getty Images for Tribeca Festival
CJ 4DPLEX acquired all rights to the film and plans to bring it to global cinemas next year. The next-generation cinema technology company is headquartered in Seoul with international offices in Los Angeles, Beijing and Tokyo. CJ 4DPLEX is a part of the CJ Group conglomerate that also includes entertainment powerhouses CJ CGV, the fifth largest theater chain in the world, and CJ ENM (CJ Entertainment & Media), which produced the award-winning film Parasite.
At the 2025 Tribeca Festival in June, The Rose: Come Back To Me received the Tribeca Runner-up Audience Prize and quickly sold out all of its screenings with an additional screening added to support audience demand. The film was directed by Eugene Yi ( Free Chol Soo Lee), and produced by Diane Quon (Oscar-nominated Minding the Gap ), Marginal MediaWorks’ Sanjay M. Sharma and Milan Chakraborty (Tribeca Jury Prize winner Cypher), HYBE James Shin (currently in production with Paramount on an untitled k-pop film directed by Benson Lee ) and Wavelength’s Joe Plummer (award-winning Won’t You Be My Neighbor?). The Busan International Film Festival runs from Sept. 17 to 26. The film airs on Sept. 20, 22 and 24.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/joanmacdonald/2025/09/18/the-rose-come-back-to-me-to-air-at-biff-before-global-release/
