BTS “Army” Set To Descend Upon Austin For World Premiere Of Documentary ‘Forever We Are Young’ — SXSW

SXSW is about to be invaded by the army.

No, not the army you may be thinking. We’re talking about ARMY – the “Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth” – the acronym for the legion of supporters of the massively popular K-Pop band BTS.

Forever We Are Young, the film directed by Grace Lee and Patty Ahn documenting this earnest and ardent fan base, holds its world premiere at the Austin, TX festival on Monday at the historic Paramount Theater, with an additional screening set for Tuesday at the ZACH Theatre. From the band’s earliest days, a little over a decade ago, fans got behind BTS.

“A lot of the fans that you meet in the beginning of the film, they’re teenagers. It’s the most malleable time of their life. They’re really emotional,” notes Lee. “One of the Korean participants [in the film], she talks about, ‘We’re more like life companions.’ They sort of went through life together growing up, going through all the sort of growing pains, the emotions. BTS is growing as a band and as a phenomenon, and so is ARMY at the same time. They’re inextricable. That was one of the things that fascinated us the most about this relationship.”

Remarkably, as the film shows, BTS has built a fan base that transcends national boundaries, ethnicity, sexual identity, or any other ways humans choose to define themselves. Says one ARMY enlistee in the film, “It’s a social movement.”

Lee observes, “This is the most diverse fan base I’ve ever seen in my life.”

The diversity extends to age. BTS fans run from tweens up to seniors. “There are groups that are like ’40-plus ARMY,’ and there are folks that identify as ‘Elder ARMY’, ‘Silver ARMY’ — who are 70- plus,” says Ahn. “A lot of K-Pop fandoms do have some intergenerational reach to them… but I think that is particularly unique to ARMY, the number of people who are over 40 and are in the fandom and as active and energetic as those who are in their teens. There is something quite unique to the fandom on this.”

ARMY members typical have a “bias,” a term within the fan culture that signifies who in the band you love or identify with most – Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V, or Jungkook. In an extensive Medium post, an ARMY recruit named Maria helpfully parsed what a fan’s bias says about them. For instance, Suga – aka Min Yoongi. “IF YOU ARE BIASED TO MIN YOONGI, I’ll be honest, I feel like you have a deep relationship with your darkness too,” Maria writes. “Maybe you’re a little envious with how he transforms his pain into songs that he can perform so publicly — and want to do the same thing about your own hurt.”

If your bias is towards Jimin, well, you’re under the sway of the celestial, according to fan site Army Project 529. “An angel on earth. I could start and end with just that sentence alone, and anyone who has watched this man over the last ten-plus years would agree,” the site writes with awe. “He’s an angel on earth. A place of safety, acceptance, and pure love for many.”

In case you’re wondering, the filmmakers are ARMY too. Big time.

“I was interested in the first generation of K-Pop, which was back in the ‘90s, but something about BTS really kind of captured my imagination… I just started listening and following and getting into the music,” Lee shares. “It was really interesting to just see people coming out of the BTS ARMY closet, especially as adults when they find out like, ‘Oh, you’re making a film about ARMY. Actually, I’m secretly ARMY too.’ It was funny to see when BTS came for that SoFi concert [in Los Angeles], I was like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know they were at the concert.’”

Ahn, who holds a Ph.D. from USC, takes a scholarly approach to her appreciation of BTS. Yet she too is ARMY, and willing to declare her “bias.”

“I love them all so dearly. But my bias is Jimin,” Ahn tells Deadline. “He’s the dancer and the ballerina and the gender fluid one that people talk about in the movie, and I feel very closely identified with him.”

And Lee’s bias? “I put it in my Southby bio, which is I’m OT7, which is One True Seven,’” she says. “I like them all equally. I cannot choose. In the past, I’ve had, ‘Ooh, this one or this one,’ but I am OT7.”

A lot of BTS music and performance – those astonishingly precise dance moves – are featured in the movie. “We spent a couple years just kind of developing the idea, having a lot of fun together, thinking about what aspects of ARMY we could focus on. But of course, we couldn’t make this film without the cooperation and help of HYBE,” notes Ahn, referring to the South Korean company that represents BTS. “We worked pretty much independently, creatively, but we did need the permission of HYBE on the archival assets and the music rights and all that.”

Adds Lee, “You can’t make a film about BTS without using the music and without using archival footage of them. So, the support and blessing of the label was something that we needed to do to actually make the film.”

Expect the ARMY to be out in full force at SXSW.

“It is the weekend of Suga’s birthday who is one of the rap members of BTS. Anytime it’s a member’s birthday, fans get together,” Lee says. “A lot of fans are coming to see the movie itself on Monday, that first screening. And so we’ll have a little, what’s called a ‘random dance play’ outside the theater where people can do dance moves together. And it’s a really important part of the fandom and staying connected and showing love and paying homage to the group itself.”