Broad Korean Lineup Sums It Up at 51st Sitges

NEWS & REPORTS
Feature

Feature

NEWS & REPORTS

Broad Korean Lineup Sums It Up at 51st Sitges

Oct 23, 2018

Writerby Pierce Conran
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MONSTRUM Takes Audience Award Home from Catalonia

Despite pulling out all the stops for last year’s massive 50th anniversary celebration, the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival returned with an even bigger 51st edition in 2018, as the Catalonian region was inundated with stars, genre cinema addicts and a truly fantastic lineup over eleven (mostly) sunny days in early October.

World cinema luminaries such as Tilda SWINTON and Nicholas CAGE took center stage in the sweeping Auditori theater under the Melia Hotel, ground zero for a festival that invades every corner of an idyllic resort town just a 30-minute drive south of Barcelona on the breezy Catalonian coast. Yet, as ever, despite its Tinseltown razzle and dazzle and the many powerhouse names from European cinema that attend each year, Sitges has always welcomed a large contingent of Korean films with open arms.

True to form, Sitges 2018 featured 18 South Korean films spread across its lineup, one of which even had the good fortune to bring home an award. Several Korean filmmakers were also lucky enough to visit, indulging in the town’s caches of cava, its abundant seafood and its long, sandy beaches.

One of Korean cinema’s most ardent fans, Mike HOSTENCH, the vice director of the Sitges film festival, explained that “the Panorama award for Monstrum proves that Korean films had another successful Sitges tour. From big players like LEE Chang-dong's BURNING and LEE Hae-young's Believer, to thrilling indie entries like KIM Ui-seok's After My Death, Korean film once again found a solid platform for publicity and distribution in Sitges."

Scarcely a year has gone by without an award being handed out by Sitges to a Korean film, with recent winners including RYOO Seung-wan’s Veteran, which picked up the Casa Asia Award in 2015, YEON Sang-ho’s TRAIN TO BUSAN for Best Director and Best Special Effects in 2016 and RYOO Seung-wan’s Orbita Prize for The Battleship Island last year, among many others. This year it was the period creature feature Monstrum, screening in the festival’s Panorama section. From director HUR Jin-ho, the film features KIM Myung-min as a general pulled out of retirement to investigate rumors of a monster roaming the forested hills beyond the palace’s gates, alongside KIM In-kwon, CHOI Woo-shik and Girls’ Day Kpop star LEE Hye-ri.

The festival’s main event, the Official Fantastic Competition, comprised a trio of works hailing from two very different corners of the Korean film industry. Not normally a name associated with the Fantastic Film Festival circuit, LEE Chang-dong had a film invited to Sitges for the first time with BURNING, his critically acclaimed MURAKAMI Haruki short story adaptation that bowed in competition at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize and the Vulcan Award for the Technical Artist.

Meanwhile, the most popular Korean films from both 2017 and 2018 were also in the competition. KIM Yong-hwa’s Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds (2017) and Along with the Gods: The Last 49 Days together form Korea’s first simultaneously filmed two-part movie. The fantasy epic features HA Jung-woo, JU Ji-hoon and KIM Hyang-gi as archangels who guide the recently departed through the seven trials for reincarnation in the afterlife. The pair of works are the first consecutive works to cross the ten million admissions mark at the box office in Korea.

Featuring in the Orbita program were three commercial titles - LEE Hae-young’s Believer, KANG Yun-sung’s THE OUTLAWS (2017) and YOON Jong-bin’s The Spy Gone North. LEE Hae-young visited Sitges for the second time, after being invited to the Second Chances lineup two years ago with The Silenced (2015). His latest work Believer, a significant hit at home with over five million admissions, is a remake of Johnnie TO 2012 Chinese film Drug War, with CHO Jin-woong and RYU Jun-yeol leading a coterie of stars in this stylish Seoul-set update.

Crowd-pleaser THE OUTLAWS, a gritty action crime drama with Don LEE (aka MA Dong-seok) in the lead, was last year’s big Chuseok hit in Korea with over seven million viewers recorded. The other Korean films in Cannes this year, The Spy Gone North is a rich 1990s-set espionage yarn featuring HWANG Jung-min as the real-life agent ‘Black Venus’, who went undercover in the North to gain intel on the Hermit Kingdom’s nuclear development plans.

Switching to the indie realm, the Noves Visions (New Visions) lineup featured both KIM Ui-seok’s After My Death and KIM Ki-duk’s Human, Space, Time and Human. After My Death debuted at the Busan International Film Festival last year, where it earned the New Currents award. The high school suicide drama is the debut of director KIM Ui-seok. Veteran indie filmmaker KIM Ki-duk, who has run afoul of the public this year following allegations of misconduct on his film sets, premiered his latest film, the fantasy-tinged gritty arthouse drama Human, Space, Time and Human, at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year.

Of course, no genre film festival would be complete without its fair share of horror and Korea pulled its weight with this year’s surprise hit found footage horror GONJIAM: Haunted Asylum screening in the Midnight X-Treme lineup. Director JUNG Bum-shik was also in town to join the festivities.

Leading the short film lineup was The Lady from 406, which screened in the Official Fantastic Short Film Competition. From The Truth Beneath (2016) director LEE Kyoung-mi, who was in town for her first trip to Sitges, the psychodrama features LEE Young-ae in her first film role since Sympathy For Lady Vengeance (2005).

Meanwhile, a trio of Korean shorts screened in the VR 360 section in the Slatix Sitges Cocoon. Sponsored by Slatix, a digital blockchain-powered ticketing system from the Slate Entertainment Group (SEG), the lineup included PARK Hyun-cheol’s Ghost, HONG Jae-gyun’s Horomaru and LEE Hyun-suk’s VOLT: CHAIN CITY (2017).

Outside of the program and the Korean film industry guests, which included several representatives from the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN), Sitges also stocked up on Korean film-related merchandise, with the stands by the Saint Sebastian Beach offering up a variety of Korean film t-shirts, Blu-rays and more.

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