THE GENERAL’S SON

Prior to 2015, the general consensus among the Korean film industry was that the Colonial Era be-tween 1910 and 1945, when Korea was a colony of the Japanese Empire, was box office poison as a setting for cinematic narratives. This view of course quickly chang...

A GOOD LAWYER’S WIFE

Around the turn of the millennium, as the Korean film scene was turning into the formidable industry that it is today, one of the most popular genres was the affair drama. Employing a franker approach to sexuality than its predecessors and daring to question t...

A BRAND NEW LIFE

The last few years have seen an explosion of works detailing the experiences of people who were born in Korea but adopted and reared overseas, such as last year’s Berlinale-invited The Return. Conflicting cultural identities form the core of this body of films... an heritage have sought to explore their roots, their films often becoming a product of their own search for identity. 10 years ago, perhaps the most important work in this cycle of films was released, Ounie LECOMTE’s sensational orphanage drama A Brand New Life. Loosely based on the director’s own experiences, A Brand New Life takes place in 1975 and focuses on the nine-year-old Jin-hee, who is having a wonderful day out with her father. They go out to eat, ride on his bicycle and he buys her n

THE KING OF PIGS

Before he conquered the world with the horror-thriller smash hit TRAIN TO BUSAN (2016), director YEON Sang-ho conquered the festival circuit with his searing animated debut The King of Pigs (2011), a dark and uncompromising take on high school bullying and its...

DANCING QUEEN

An unassuming comedy-drama vehicle for stars UHM Jeong-hwa and HWANG Jung-min, Danc-ing Queen was one of the first films out of the gate in 2012 and proved to be a major hit with view-ers, arriving in the middle of a trend for films rooted in nostalgia for mid...

ARAHAN

After a pair a grungy action-dramas brought him to the industry’s attention (Die Bad, 2000; No Blood No Tears, 2002), director RYOO Seung-wan took on his first blockbuster back in 2004 with the Martial Arts action-comedy Arahan. A labor of love that brought to...

JOINT SECURITY AREA /JSA

Following a pair of little-know films, a young filmmaker by the name of PARK Chan-wook was en-trusted with a large budget and cast featuring some of the hottest young stars in the industry at the turn of the millennium. The result, the North Korea-themed milit...

PUNCH

Released in the middle of Fall in 2011, the drama Punch was hardly expected to become one of the year’s top-selling films, but that’s exactly what happened when director LEE Han’s winning combination of heartfelt drama, humor and social themes sold 5.3 million...

SPELLBOUND

Between the thriller White Night (2009) and the disaster drama The Tower (2012), Korean star SON Ye-jin took a rare trip into comedy with the hit horror-comedy Spellbound (2011). Co-starring with LEE Min-ki, whose own star was quickly rising at the time, the f...

THE FAKE

Before conquering the world with his hit horror-thriller TRAIN TO BUSAN (2016), which became the most successful Korean film of all time at the international box office with well over USD 100 mil-lion in global sales, director YEON Sang-ho had already blazed a...