February 19th this year brought about the end of the 67th Berlin International Film Festival during a particularly cold year for the event, but one which yielded an array of delights for the world’s cinephiles. Among these were several Korean films which, after a quieter 2016, earned a pair of major awards, not to mention an unusually high degree of media scrutiny back home.

 

Hong Sangsoo took part in the Berlinale Competition for the third time this year, following Night And Day in 2008 and Nobody’s Daughter Haewon in 2013, with On the Beach at Night Alone. One of the last films to screen during this year’s Berlinale, Hong’s latest was immediately embraced by critics once it bowed on February 16th.

With several links to the rest of his body of work, On the Beach at Night Alone was received as a familiar addition to his filmography, yet it elicited stronger responses than usual. Several critics went so far as to claim that this work had converted them to being Hong fans after previously finding the director’s output dialogue-heavy and inscrutable. The jury, which this year was chaired by Paul Verhoeven and featured actors Maggie Gyllenhaal and Diego Luna, among others, seemed to agree as they gave the film an award, making it the first of Hong’s works to be prized in Berlin.

Of course it wasn’t Hong himself who received an award, but his leading star KIM Min-hee, who took home the Silver Bear for Best Actress, joining fellow actresses KANG Soo-yeon and JEON Do-yeon as the only Korean performers to ever win an acting prize at one of the three most prestigious film festivals in the world. KANG earned hers at Venice for IM Kwon-taek’s The Surrogate Womb (1987), while JEON was dubbed the ‘Queen of Cannes’ by Korean media after her win there in 2007 for LEE Chang-dong’s Secret Sunshine. She was only the second Korean to win a prize in Berlin’s main competition, after KIM Ki-duk won the Silver Bear for Best Director for his work Samaritan Girl in 2004.

KIM has been a well-known model and actress in Korea for well over a decade but it’s only been in the last few years that she’s begun to be taken seriously as a performer. She impressed viewers and critics alike in BYUN Young-joo’s romantic thriller Helpless (2012), which earned her the Best Actress award from the Busan Film Critics Association Awards. She was once again embraced after she first partnered with Hong on Right Now, Wrong Then in 2015, a role which saw her repeat her win with the Busan Film Critics Association. A much wider audience gained exposure to her newfound talent when she starred in PARK Chan-wook’s 2016 Cannes Competition title The Handmaiden, for which she earned Best Actress honors from the Director's Cut Awards and the Blue Dragon Awards.

On the Beach at Night Alone features KIM as an actress who agonizes after entering into a relationship with a married director and waits for him to join her in Hamburg, only to return to Korea after the affair has ended. During press rounds in Berlin, director Hong has stated that his film is in some ways a reflection of real life.

 

Without a gossip angle behind its win, documentary Becoming Who I Was, the other Korean winner in Berlin this year, received far less attention. From directors MOON Chang-yong and JEON Jin, Becoming Who I Was earned the Grand Prize in the Generation Kplus category at Berlin this year. Among the section’s jury was compatriot YOON Ga-eun, whose own feature debut The World of Us screened in Generation last year and her short film Sprout earned the Crystal Bear for Best Short Film in 2014.

The documentary, which debuted at the DMZ International Documentary Film Festival and went on to screen at the Busan International Film Festival, follows the life of Angdu, a young boy born in the Himalayas as the reincarnated spirit of an ancient Buddhist monk. Beyond its prize, the film also walked away with a distribution deal for North America after signing a contract with Bond/360.

Another film that screened in Busan and went on to Berlin was the indie drama Autumn, Autumn, screening in the Forum section. The second feature by JANG Woo-jin, following his debut A Fresh Start, the Grand Prize winner in the Korean Competition of the Jeonju International Film Festival in 2014, Autumn, Autumn premiered in the Korean Cinema Today section of Busan last year, where it picked up the Vision-Director’s Award.

JANG’s work features two narratives, one of young man returning to a provincial after looking for work in Seoul, the other of middle-aged couple revisiting the same town, which intersect through the same train journey. Grounded in realism and assembled through moments, experience and reflections, rather than narrative, the film received positive notices from critics in Berlin.

Going back into the past, this year’s Berlinale also presented a pair of restored classic Korean films in the Forum section as special screenings, YU Hyun-mok’s An Aimless Bullet (1961) and LEE Doo-yong’s The Last Witness (1980). The Korean Film Archive (KOFA), which restored both titles, brought the films to Berlin, as well as director LEE, who introduced his film. 

An Aimless Bullet, often cited as the greatest Korean film of all time, was made during a special time, when the Korean film industry experienced a certain amount of freedom in the wake of a political coup and before the beginning of the next administration. The Last Witness, a fiercely political work that was remade in Korea in 2001, was screened uncensored. At the time of its release, censors had forced the filmmakers to cut out an hour from their original cut.

Berlinale’s Korean crop will surely have plenty more in store as we move through the festival calendar in 2017. So far, both On the Beach at Night Alone and Autumn, Autumn have been invited to the 41st Hong Kong International Film Festival, which kicks off on April 11th.