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The film festival calendar kicks off with a number of big events every year, but none is as illustrious as the Berlin International Film Festival, which will be marking its 64th edition in 2014. Korean cinema is never absent from Berlinale and this year will be no different with six features and one short spread across the festival’s various sections.

 

Though no Korean films appear in this year’s Main Competition lineup, the prestigious Forum section, which did not feature a current Korean film in its program last year, will screen a trio of films this year. Two of those films, 10 Minutes (2013) and Non-fiction Diary (2013), premiered at the 18th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) last October. LEE Yong-seung’s debut feature 10 Minutes, which featured in the New Currents section and won the FIPRESCI and KNN Movie Awards, is a timely exploration of societal pressure in the workplace. JUNG Yoon-suk’s documentary Non-fiction Diary, also a feature debut and the recipient of the Mecenat Award at BIFF last year, takes a look at the odd and transient atmosphere that pervaded 1990s Korea following its democratization in the late 1980s by looking at various news items such as the Jijon-pa murder case and the Sampoong Department Store collapse. Joining them will be the world premiere of Kelvin Kyung-kun PARK’s documentary A Dream of Iron (2013), a hypnotic visual document of steel-making and ship building in Pohang, South Korea. PARK’s previous film Cheonggyecheon Medley: A Dream of Iron (2010) also featured in the forum section in 2011.

 

Going to the Panorama section this year will be LEESONG Hee-il’s new film Night Flight, a world premiere that follows his previous Berlinale selections White Night (2012) and No Regret (2006). Bong Joon Ho’s blockbuster sci-fi Snowpiercer (2013) will also have a special screening at the festival. The film was a big success at home, accruing over 9.3 million spectators, and is steadily being unveiled to global audiences, having already screened theatrically in France, Hong Kong and Japan. Gina KIM’s English-language Final Recipe (2013), a culinary feature set in Singapore and Shanghai and starring Michelle YEOH, will screen in Berlin following its invitations to San Sebastian, Hawaii and Sao Paulo International Film Festivals. Featuring in this year’s Generation Kplus section will be YOON Ga-eun’s Sprout (2013), which follows a young girl who meets an old man on her way to buy bean sprouts for her grandfather’s ancestral rites.

 

Audiences in Berlin will have the chance to sample the best of contemporary Korean cinema at this year’s Berlinale.

 

10 Minutes
Director LEE Yong-seung
Starring BAEK Jong-hwan, KIM Jong-gu

 

10 Minutes, LEE Yong-seung’s feature debut, deals with a social hot potato in Korea, contract workers. Based on LEE’s personal experience, the film unfolds a very realistic story about a young man who starts work as an intern in a government facility, but falls into a dilemma when he is offered a full-time position.

LEE explains, “I want to depict the everyday of ordinary people, not paint a picture of a big event. Irregular workers and full-time workers are all just humans struggling to survive in a jungle called the ‘workplace’. He also adds that “The company that I used to work for had the upper hand in a contract relationship. During an open tender, my company would take a high-handed position and demand something of the bidding company by the next day. I guess it made me feel that people were being looked at and judged every 10 minutes. Such an experience inspired me to recreate a realistic account of life at the workplace broken down by these 10 minutes, and the complicated food chain there where position permits irresponsible words to be thrown out and power abused without much conscience.”

“The social climate in my previous and current works is reflective of what is happening in Korean society in general. It wasn’t an intentional decision for me to make a social dramas one after the other, but I guess I am interested in stories that deal with and contemplate the social atmosphere of today.” said LEE, who received the KNN Audience Award and the FIPRESCI Award at the 18th Busan International Film Festival for this film.

 

Snowpiercer
Director Bong Joon Ho
Starring Chris Evans, SONG Kang-ho, Ed Harris

 

Snowpiercer (2013), produced by PARK Chan-wook and directed by Bong Joon Ho, was the hottest issue in the Korean film industry in 2013. Trapped in an extreme environment during a new Ice Age and with a severe class struggle within a train housing the remainder of human civilization, Snowpiercer suggests a message about social structures. It primarily achieved success in two ways: by receiving recognition as a film of unique ambition and by attracting 9.3 million viewers in Korea. This Korean blockbuster was released in France in October 2013, where it earned USD 5.3 million, becoming the most successful Korean film ever in the European nation. In the following month, it began screening in Hong Kong and it debuted in December in Thailand. This science fiction action film also met with cinephiles at the 8th International Rome Film Festival and the 18th Busan International Film Festival. It was also chosen as the closing feature for the 13th Hong Kong Asian Film Festival.

Featuring an international cast with the likes of Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, Jamie Bell and Ed Harris, not to mention Korean stars SONG Kang-ho and KO Ah-sung, Snowpiercer was the most expensive Korean film ever produced, with a budget of USD 40 million, and recouped half its production costs in international sales well ahead of its Korean premiere in July 2013. The film was sold to 197 countries, including to The Weinstein Company, which took the rights to all English-language territories. Snowpiercer is set to open in Japan in February and will bow in numerous other territories over the coming months.

A ambitious sci-fi of momentum and ideas, bolstered by a detailed and immersive mise-en-scene, Snowpiercer marks a new level of sophistication for Korean cinema. With a global feel and enticing genre elements that have made it the most anticipated Korean film of all time overseas, while retaining enough Korean humor to become a significant hit at home, Snowpiercer has ushered in a new age of for the industry when it can set it sights on audiences beyond its borders that could match or even surpass its domestic tallies.

Remaining secret until the start of the festival, Bong’s film will have a gala presentation at Berlinale this year. To support the film’s presentation, financier and distributor CJ Entertainement will stage a special reception for Snowpiercer in Berlin.

Final Recipe
Director KIM Gina
Starring Henry, Michelle YEOH, Chin HAN

KIM Gina’s Final Recipe is a co-production between Korea, Thailand, and Singapore. KIM had already worked in an international setting when she directed Never Forever (2007), a co-production between Korea and the U.S. with HA Jung-woo and Vera Farmiga as lead stars. In this film, she shows the love and the lives of people from different countries through a single event, a cooking contest. A member of an idol group Super Junior, Henry, and a world-famous star Michelle YEOH are leading this culinary production. Filming of Final Recipe was completed in September of 2012 and had its world premiered at the San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain. According to CHOI Yeon-woo, the producer of this film, “in this story about a Chinese family, most of the lines are spoken in English as we targeted for Chinese and the U.S. markets, rather than Korea.” It is expected to be released in China as early as the first half of this year and then it will advance onto the U.S. market.

 

 

Sprout
Director YOON Ga-eun
Starring KIM Soo-an, KIM So-jin

 

One busy day of preparing for her grandfather’s ancestral offering, a seven-year-old girl Bora goes on her first trip ever; to the market to buy sprouts. She sets out very gallantly but her excursion isn’t so easy. Many dangers and temptations get in the way of her adventure.

Sprout is director YOON Ga-eun’s fourth production in which she looks at the world from a little child’s point of view and describes running an errand as a journey. A graduate of the Korea National University of Arts (Graduate school), YOON presented her unique perspective in Sprout, a refined talent she acquired through her previous works; The Taste of Salvia (2009), Proof (2010), and Guest (2011).
 

By SONG Soon-jin.Pierce Conran