The London Korean Film Festival returns this November for its 21st edition, bringing together established directors, emerging filmmakers and some of Korean cinema’s most recognisable actors for two weeks of screenings, premieres and conversations.
For more than two decades, the London Korean Film Festival (LKFF) has introduced British audiences to the remarkable variety of stories coming out of South Korea. Over the years, the festival has become a much-loved part of London’s film calendar, introducing audiences to Korean films they might not otherwise have the chance to see on the big screen. Alongside works by some of Korea’s best-known directors, it has also allowed lesser-known and independent filmmakers to share their stories with UK audiences, bringing together films that reflect different generations, experiences and ways of looking at the world.
Returning from 2 to 16 November 2026, the festival’s 21st edition will take place across BFI Southbank, Ciné Lumière and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). Organised by the Korean Cultural Centre UK, with support from the Korean Film Council, this year’s programme brings together crime thrillers, family dramas, romantic stories, documentaries and films concerned with identity, belonging and the difficulties of modern life. There is plenty here for longtime admirers of Korean cinema, but also for those who may be discovering it for the first time.
Among the most anticipated events are the UK premieres of Kim Mi-jo’s The Journey to Gyeong-ju and Park Hoon-jung’s Tristes Tropiques, which will open and close the festival respectively. Audiences can also look forward to Lee Chang-dong’s latest work, Possible Love, alongside a selection of independent productions and films from Korean filmmakers living and working beyond South Korea.
The festival will begin with the UK premiere of Kim Mi-jo’s The Journey to Gyeong-ju (2025), a crime drama that brings together an impressive cast led by Lee Jung-eun, whose performance in Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite remains one of her most internationally recognised roles. Joining her are Gong Hyo-jin, Park So-dam and Lee Yeon, who play her three daughters. At the centre of the story is Ok-sil, a mother struggling with the murder of her youngest family member. Rather than accepting what has happened, she sets off on a journey with her three daughters, determined to seek revenge. What begins as a family road trip carries a much darker purpose, with grief and anger driving the women towards an uncertain outcome. The premise offers an intriguing starting point, especially with four accomplished actresses sharing the screen. Korean cinema has often explored the complicated relationships between parents and children, but the combination of a family drama and a revenge narrative promises something rather different from the usual portrayal of mourning.
Director Kim Mi-jo and actress Lee Jung-eun will attend the Opening Gala for a Q&A, giving audiences an opportunity to hear about the making of the film and the characters at the heart of its story.
Lee Jung-eun will also attend a special screening of Pil Gam-seong’s My Daughter Is a Zombie (2025), an adaptation of Lee Yoon-chang’s popular webtoon. The film follows a father trying to care for his daughter after she becomes infected with a zombie virus. Although its premise belongs to the horror genre, the story takes a more affectionate and humorous approach to the relationship between a parent and child, finding moments of warmth in a situation that could easily have been played entirely for fear.
For its Closing Gala, the festival has selected Park Hoon-jung’s Tristes Tropiques (2025), which will receive its UK premiere in the presence of the director. Park has built a reputation for films that rarely shy away from violence, moral ambiguity or the darker sides of human behaviour. His earlier work, including New World (2013) and The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion (2018), established him as a filmmaker with a particular interest in criminal organisations, power struggles and characters pushed to their limits. Tristes Tropiques appears to continue that fascination. The death of a kill-squad leader sets off a brutal chain of events, drawing its characters into a world where violence has consequences far beyond the initial act. The film has already attracted attention on the international festival circuit, winning the Nouveau Genre Grand Prize at the 32nd L’Étrange Festival. Park will take part in a Q&A following the screening, bringing the 2026 edition to a close with a filmmaker whose work has helped shape the contemporary Korean action thriller.
One of the festival’s most significant screenings comes from Lee Chang-dong, a director whose films have long examined the emotional and social divisions within Korean society. His latest work, Possible Love (2026), arrives in London following its success at the Venice Film Festival, where it received the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize. Known for films such as Secret Sunshine (2007), Poetry (2010) and Burning (2018), Lee has never been a filmmaker interested in providing easy answers. His stories often begin with ordinary people whose lives gradually reveal something much larger about the society around them. He is particularly attentive to the things his characters cannot easily express, whether through shame, resentment, disappointment or the desire for a different life. In Possible Love, Lee turns his attention to relationships and the growing distance between those who have financial security and those who do not. Class inequality has been explored by many Korean filmmakers, but Lee’s approach has always been distinguished by his patience with characters and his willingness to examine contradictions without reducing people to simple symbols of wealth or poverty. The screening will include a recorded introduction from the director, allowing audiences to hear from Lee about his latest film.
Another great inclusion is Yoon Ga-eun’s The World of Love (2025), which arrives ahead of its UK and Ireland theatrical release on 27 November. Yoon has developed a reputation for portraying childhood and adolescence with sensitivity, allowing young characters to experience emotions that adults frequently overlook or dismiss. Her latest film centres on the life of a high school student and has already received considerable critical praise. The programme also includes Hana Korea (2025), directed by Frederik Sølberg and starring Kim Minha, familiar to international audiences through the television series Pachinko. The film follows a young North Korean refugee attempting to build a new life, confronting the emotional difficulties of leaving one world behind while trying to find a place in another. Meanwhile, director Kim Do-young, whose debut feature Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 (2019) became an important conversation piece about women’s experiences in contemporary Korean society, returns with Once We Were Us (2025). A remake of Rene Liu’s Chinese romantic drama Us and Them (2018), the film explores love, memory and the relationships that continue to occupy our thoughts long after they have ended.
Apart from the gala presentations and high-profile special screenings, the festival’s Cinema Now strand offers a closer look at the variety of films currently being made in South Korea. One particularly appealing inclusion is Time of Cinema (2025), an anthology directed by Lee Jong-pil, Yoon Ga-eun and Jang Kun-jae. Rather than focusing on a single conventional narrative, the three filmmakers consider what cinema means to the people who make it and those who watch it. At a time when streaming platforms have changed the way audiences consume films, a work that reflects on the experience of going to the cinema feels especially relevant. There is something irreplaceable about sitting in a darkened room with strangers, sharing the same story and reacting to it together, and Time of Cinema invites viewers to think about why that experience continues to matter.
Those looking for something more unsettling will find Kim Tae-kyeong’s Home A Loan (2026), a psychological thriller about a woman who moves into a neglected building with her two children, believing that the property will eventually be redeveloped. Her hopes for a better future begin to unravel when strange sights and sounds disturb her new home, gradually changing her behaviour. In Yoo Jong-seok’s Be My Baby (2025), two women whose relationship is not quite that of conventional sisters find themselves caught in desperate circumstances. The director’s debut feature promises a tense exploration of dependence, vulnerability and the decisions people make when their options begin to disappear. The strand also includes two coming-of-age stories that approach adolescence from very different directions.
Yoo Jae-wook’s The Gorals (2025) follows four young female outsiders, using their experiences to explore friendship, belonging and the expectations placed upon them. Its rebellious spirit offers a contrast to Son Kyeong-su’s The Accordion Door (2025), which follows a high school student who unexpectedly develops an extraordinary talent for writing after a mysterious incident.
In recent years, Korean filmmakers living and working outside South Korea have brought their own experiences and perspectives to the screen, telling stories shaped by life between different countries and cultures. The success of films such as Minari (2020) helped bring greater international attention to stories about Korean families living abroad, but the experiences of the Korean diaspora are far too varied to be represented by a single film or perspective.
This year’s festival will present the UK premieres of two debut features that explore what it means to grow up between cultures. Korean Canadian director Jerome Yoo’s Mongles (2024) uses magical realism to examine the diasporic experience through three interconnected parts. Its dreamlike approach offers an alternative to more conventional stories about migration and identity, suggesting that memories, imagination and a sense of cultural displacement can become closely intertwined. Korean American filmmaker Stephanie Ahn’s Bedford Park (2026) takes a different route, bringing together two second-generation Korean Americans whose lives intersect following a car accident. Audrey Park, played by Moon Choi, is a New Yorker, while Eli, portrayed by Son Sukku, is a former wrestler from New Jersey. Their unexpected encounter opens the door to a story concerned with identity, family expectations and the emotional difficulties passed from one generation to the next. The film received the US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Debut Feature at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, marking an encouraging beginning for Ahn as a feature filmmaker.
Another wonderful story comes in Kim Jin-yu’s Journey There (2025), starring Kim Hye-ok and Justin H. Min, known for his roles in The Umbrella Academy and After Yang. The film follows Min-jun, a young conductor searching for his birth mother, whose encounters with Chun-hee gradually bring her into the life of an orphaned boy with a remarkable gift for music. Through these relationships, the film considers the meaning of family and the bonds that can develop between people who initially appear to have little in common. Director Kim Jin-yu will attend the festival for a Q&A following the screening.
The festival’s Women’s Voices strand continues to provide space for independent female filmmakers, particularly those addressing experiences and social concerns that are often neglected in mainstream cinema. Among this year’s selections is Yoo Jaein’s En Route To (2025), a debut feature that received the New Currents Award and Best Actor recognition for Lee Ji-won at the Busan International Film Festival, before being selected for the Berlin International Film Festival. The film follows two high school students and examines the difficult subject of adolescent pregnancy termination. Shin Su-won’s The Mutation (2025) brings together two strangers who have each learned to hide parts of themselves from the world. Se-oh, a young man of mixed Black heritage, feels safer moving through society behind a mask, while So-ra has withdrawn from the world following the death of her female partner. Their stories touch on prejudice, grief and the exhausting experience of concealing one’s identity to feel accepted or protected. Through these two characters, the film examines what happens when people begin to believe that being themselves is something they cannot afford.
A different kind of personal awakening appears in Cho Hyn-jin’s Mad Dance Office (2026), starring Yeom Hye-ran as Guk-hee, a district office director who has spent much of her life working without giving herself time to enjoy it. When she unexpectedly discovers dance, she finds something that has long been missing from her daily routine. The premise may sound simple, but its attention to a woman rediscovering pleasure and personal freedom offers a welcome change from stories that define female characters entirely through their responsibilities to others.
The Women’s Voices programme also includes four short films covering fiction, documentary and animation. My Aunt (2026), co-directed by Wi Eun-kyoung and Son Gwang-min, explores the affection between an aunt and her nephew, while Chang Seoyun’s documentary Speak, Young Granny (2026) draws on the filmmaker’s own experience of being diagnosed with premature menopause at just 24. Seo Saerom and Bae Issac’s My Killing Erotic Video (2026) approaches women’s desires and anxieties with humour, and Choi Eunsoo’s Kick It (2026) follows a schoolgirl whose love of football brings her into conflict with the rules of a competition reserved for boys. Although their subjects differ considerably, the films share an interest in experiences that are too easily overlooked, giving their characters room to express frustration, ambition, affection and the desire to be understood.
Korean cinema has enjoyed extraordinary international recognition over the past decade, yet the films that achieve worldwide commercial success represent only a small part of what the country’s filmmakers are producing. Beyond the familiar names are directors experimenting with form, actors taking on unexpected roles and independent productions tackling subjects that rarely receive widespread attention. The 2026 programme acknowledges both sides of that industry; established filmmakers such as Lee Chang-dong and Park Hoon-jung appear alongside first-time directors, while the Women’s Voices and Cinema Now strands offer audiences a chance to encounter work that might otherwise struggle to find distribution outside Korea.
The festival also offers something that watching a film at home cannot: the opportunity to meet the people responsible for bringing these stories to the screen. With Kim Mi-jo, Lee Jung-eun, Park Hoon-jung and Kim Jin-yu confirmed to attend, the post-screening conversations should provide an additional reason to visit.
For two weeks in November, London audiences will have the opportunity to experience that breadth for themselves, from major international award winners to small, deeply personal stories that deserve just as much attention.
The 21st London Korean Film Festival takes place from 2 to 16 November 2026 at BFI Southbank, Ciné Lumière and the Institute of Contemporary Arts.
For the full programme, screening information and tickets, visit www.koreanfilm.co.uk.
Festival organised by the Korean Cultural Centre UK, with support from the Korean Film Council.
Featured image courtesy of LKFF
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