Forgot password

 

Now going on its eighth year, the Paris Korean Film Festival has gone from strength to strength, exhibiting one of the more eclectic mixes of Korean films available anywhere outside of Korea. As an example of its diversity, commercial tearjerker Hope, an LEE Joon-ik film that has so far attracted over 2.3 million spectators to theaters, will serve as the opening film while closing the event will be the latest entry in auteur HONG Sangsoo’s oeuvre, Our Sunhi, which nabbed the cineaste the Silver Leopard for Best Director at the recent Locarno International Film Festival.

 

This year a total of 23 features and 22 shorts will make up the festival’s varied sections, many of them European premieres. The bulk of the program will be featured in the Paysage (Panorama) section, including Eungyo, All About My Wife, Jiseul, Fatal, The Russian Novel, Ari Ari The Korean Cinema and many more. In addition, a trio of documentaries (My Father’s E-mails, The Girl from the South and Dream House by the Border) will make a sidebar focusing on the separation of the Korean peninsula.

 

Following previous spotlights on YOON Sung-hyun (Bleak Night) and KIM Kyung-mook (Stateless Things), this year’s Portrait section will explore the works of up-and-coming filmmaker SHIN Su-won. Included in the focus will comprise her features Passerby #3 (2010) and Pluto, as well as her shorts Shave (2003) and The Circle Line, the latter of which won the Cannes+ Award at the Cannes Film Festival last year.

 

The Line, fresh from this year’s Cannes, is among the 22 shorts that will screen along with a brief showcase of director OH Tae-heon (A Flower Does not Wilt But...). The final program is a retrospective of the brilliant 1970s Korean filmmaker HA Kil-jong, including his classics Pollen (1972) and The March of Fools (1975). HA’s career was sadly short in 1979, when the cineaste was only 37 years old.

 

This year’s packed 8th edition of the Paris Korean Film Festival will take place from October 29th to November 5th.