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Director SHIM Sung-bo
Starring KIM Yun-seok, PARK Yoo-chun, HAN Ye-ri, LEE Hui-joon, MOON Sung-keun, KIM Sang-ho, YOO Seung-mok
Release Date  August 13th

 

Bong Joon Ho, who made a streak of success as a director with Memories of Murder, The Host and Snowpiercer, introduced Haemoo, the first film he produced. Bong, who has drawn attention of the global audiences, left a comment about the feelings for producing the film, “It was a story that I couldn’t help cinematizing.” Haemoo is the debut film for Bong as a producer and for SHIM Sung-bo, the screenwriter of Memories of Murder, as a director. Since it is the first film made by the Bong and SHIM duo of Memories of Murder in shifted positions, it created a lot of news even before the production started.

Haemoo is a tragic story about ‘Cheol-ju’, a captain who is about to lose his ship ‘Jeon-jin’ because of very low income. With the intention to make a fortune, Cheol-ju invites stowaways on board. It is when they sail into a thick sea fog, the tragedy starts. A number of great actors play in the film. KIM Yun-seok, who plays the role of the captain, received favorable criticism when he showed his capacity as an intensive thriller actor in The Chaser and The Yellow Sea. The crew members include LEE Hui-joon, who lately has gained a lot of popularity on screen and TV, a long experienced actor MOON Sung-keun, KIM Sang-ho and YOO Seung-mok also signed up for the supporting roles. PARK Yoo-chun, a member of the Korean boyband JYJ, acts as a naïve crew member Dong-sik. Having already achieved recognition with his satisfactory acting ability on TV dramas, he made impressive performance in this film. On top of that, a rising star HAN Ye-ri played Hong-mae, a stowaway from China who falls in love with Dong-sik.

Bong Joon ho, the producer of Haemoo picked the smuggling part as the most impressive scene. He said, “Take a good look at the scene where two ships meet each other on the dark sea at night and stowaways move to ‘Jeon-jin’ ship.” HONG Kyeong-pyo, the director of photography, also said he regards the scene the most important part. The setting of Haemoo is right after the IMF crisis in Korea. SHIM explained, “Korean People used to discriminate immigrant workers in the 90’s. The film tells about the situation where they lost humanity as the economy collapsed.”

 

The best crew members in the Korean films industry got together to boost the realism of Haemoo. The director of photography HONG Kyeong-pyo (Snowpiercer, Mother), the art director LEE Ha-jun (The Face Reader, The Thieves) and the costume designer CHOI Se-yeon worked together for the film. To maximize reality, they used only minimal computer graphics and shot on an actual ship floating on sea. For the scenes they couldn’t film in a real ship, they made a set identical to the ship. Actors also contributed to the realism by staying and living as fishermen at a fishing village for a while. They had to go through physical pain as well because 70% of the entire film was shot on the ship.

In order to make the aforementioned smuggling scene the most impressive and to look realistic, they floated two miniature ships in a water tank. It was the first time in Korea that a domestic SFX team manufactured a gimbal set to shoot in the water tank.