Celine Song’s Past Lives that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023 to critical acclaim continued to generate momentum during much of the awards race securing Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. Although it ended the awards season without an Academy Award, it did win multiple accolades including Best Film and Best Director at the Independent Spirits’ Awards, and its journey across the world where it has resonated with audiences in and out of America has put its director and Korean diaspora cinema under the spotlight.

Coming three years after Minari was also nominated, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the historic night at the Academy Awards in 2020 when Parasite won Best Picture has created opportunities for films by directors of Asian and Korean descent.  

Given the connections to Korea, Past Lives was being closely followed by the Korean press and those in the industry, which was also true of the Netflix series Beef that won multiple Emmy Awards. The release of the film in early March to coincide with the culmination of the awards season brought the film further attention. In some respects, its release in Korea feels like the end of a journey – returning to where it all began. The semi-autobiographical story of a relationship between childhood friends started in Korea.

This week, therefore, owing to the success of the film, we highlight recent works by female directors in Korea working in the independent industry. Beginning with The Hill of Secrets, we profile a total of seven films that are recommended to those who connected with Past Lives.

The Hill of Secrets (2023)

The film is set in a period (1990s) that echoes the beginning of Past Lives, which is presumably when the director Lee Jieun was in elementary school (She was born in the mid-1980s).

It follows a studious and tenacious 12-year-old girl (Moon Seung-a) who is elected to be class president for her pledge to have a box where students can write down their secrets. She is harboring her own secrets ashamed of what her parents do for a living working in a market. When she enters a writing competition, she is forced to confront the animosity she has towards her family. 

There is a growing body of work in Korean independent cinema that is telling stories from the perspective of children. Yoon Ga-eun’s films, most notably The World of Us (2016), were some of the first and other features have since followed including this heartwarming feature debut by Lee Jieun that was warmly embraced upon release. It premiered at the Jeonju International Film Festival in 2022 before screening at various film festivals such as the Berlin International Film Festival where it was invited to the Generation Kplus section. 

Greenhouse (2023)

A significantly more dour but no less engaging film is Lee Sol-hui’s Greenhouse produced by the Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA). It begins as a film dealing with mental health when a woman (Kim Seo-hyung) who lives in a greenhouse works as a caregiver for a man who’s suffering from dementia. When something unexpected happens under her care the film shifts gears and turns into a surprising genre film.

While much of Korean independent cinema are social dramas, there are more examples of genre-driven features directed by women like Greenhouse that do deal with social issues but do so using a range of genres despite the limited budgets.  

Tightly paced and with absorbing performances by Kim Seo-hyung and An So-yo who plays a woman who meets the caregiver at a therapy session, it made an impression at the Busan International Film Festival where it won the CGV Arthouse award along with two other accolades.

Ms. Apocalypse (2024)

There is an interesting use of color in Lim Sun-ae’s second feature that takes place at the end of 1999 on the eve of the new millennium. It begins in black and white, which is then replaced by a vibrant aesthetic when the film’s central protagonist, a young woman played by Lee Yoo-young, is released from jail. She had aided a delivery driver (Roh Jae-won), a man she would have feelings for, to embezzle some money from her company. When she gets out of prison, the woman is approached by the wife (Lim Sun-woo) of the man she helped with an intriguing offer. 

It’s an unconventional story, doesn’t feel very plausible but it remains whimsical and charming portraying this era – often done with nostalgia seen in films such as 20th Century Girl (2022) and the Ditto remake (2022) – in colorful fashion with its strong production values and commanding performances. 

While it does make references to the difficulties experienced by those disabled  - the wife suffers from a disease that leaves her paralysed from the neck down – it doesn’t really delve into it in a big way keeping it light reflective of the film’s style. While independent films of the 2010s were often bleak, gritty and intense some of the indie features of the early 2020s have palpably found a more upbeat tone. 

Birth (2023)

South Korea’s chronic low-birth rate is frequently in the news as the population ages, while measures that seek to reverse it have yet to prove effective. Yoo Ji-young’s third feature tackles the impact a birth can have on individuals and couples and the pressure society places on women when they do become pregnant. 

It follows a writer (Han Hae-in) who wants to continue with her career but the pregnancy comes between her own desires and ambitions, and also the relationship between the writer and her boyfriend who works at a private institute. Ultimately, the unplanned pregnancy turns their lives upside down leading to a dramatic chain of events. 

Although long at 155 minutes and does deal with some heavy and pressing issues that affect contemporary society making it tough viewing experience, it’s a feature that lingers long in the mind – in part because it feels so pertinent to Korea’s demographic crisis. 

The film premiered at the Busan International Film Festival and won the Grand Prix in the Proxima competition section at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Czech Republic.

FAQ (2024)

Korea’s competitive education system is the subject of Kim Da-min’s delightful feature debut FAQ, which like Miss Apocalypse and Hill of Secrets is full of charm. It follows an elementary student called Dong-chun (Park Na-eun) who has to grapple with her mother’s demands to succeed at after-school academies. During a school trip, she comes across a bottle of makgeolli, Korean rice wine, and brings it home. She discovers that it is communicating to her by emitting noises as it ferments, later realising that they correspond to the morse code for the Persian alphabet. 

Creative and fantastical in its approach to highlight the pressures children face, it’s a tale of self-discovery as she comes to gain a greater understanding of the world and those around her, especially her mother echoing the traits in films such as The Hill of Secrets and The World of Us. 

It made its premiere at the Busan International Film Festival in 2023 like several of the films profiled here where it won the Aurora Award, sharing it with House of the Seasons.     

Kim Min-young of the Report Card (2022)

Also a coming-of-age film set against the backdrop of education is Kim Min-young of the Report Card directed by two young female filmmakers Lim Jisun and Lee Jaeeun. It centers on two friends called Jung-hee (Kim Ju-ah) and Min-young (Yoon Ah-jung) and how their friendship changes once they hit twenty. They’ve both taken the university entrance exam and they were also part of a poetry club -  together with their other friend Soosanna (Son Da-hyun) who is in the U.S. 

Min-young is now attending a university while Jung-hee seems to have given up. One day Min-young invites Jung-hee to her apartment in Seoul and we see they are on different paths – or are they? Reminiscent of the female-led Take Care of My Cat (2001), it explores how close friendships come under strain amidst societal pressures as they enter adulthood. 

Along with the Jeonju International Film Festival, it screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam – a festival known for championing Korean cinema (it screened Bong Joon Ho’s first film Barking Dogs Never Bite) -  as well as festivals in Hong Kong, Hawaii among others. 

TEN Months (2021)

Like Birth unintended pregnancy is central to the narrative of Namkoong Sun’s TEN Months, which is more satirical in its tone as it follows a talented game engineer in her twenties called Mirae (Choi Sung-eun) who falls pregnant unexpectedly. Instead of getting support, either her decisions are made for her – to get married to her boyfriend (Seo Young-joo) and be a mother – or be ostracized from society altogether. Her career is also put on hold as she is prevented from relocating to China because of her pregnancy, it’s also difficult for her to get another job making her vulnerable and isolated. Everywhere she turns is further misery – even getting out of the car is a challenge with so little space and no-one there to help her. 

It’s a damning critique of how pregnancy outside marriage is viewed and also the obstacles women face when they are pregnant, and the choices they are forced to make. But it’s told with a sense of humor, optimized by Mirae’s infectious determination and her straight-talking obstetrician. 

Edited by Shim Eunha

Written by Jason Bechervaise