Lee Wan-min is a young South Korean filmmaker. She directed several shorts, including Chima (2006), Mensrea (2008), Sang (2009) and Mock or Die (2010), and in 2016, she presented her first feature, Jamsil (2016), which she both wrote and directed, at the 21st Busan International Film Festival; this year, the film was screened in the Women’s…
Category: Foreign Films
The 12th London Korean Film Festival: In Conversation with Lee Wan-min and Kim Sae-byuk
Lee Wan-min is a young South Korean film director; after directing several shorts, including Chima (2006), Mensrea (2008), Sang (2009) and Mock or Die (2010), she presented her first feature, Jamsil (2016), for the first time to the audience at the 21st Busan International Film Festival last year; the film was also screened in the Women’s Voices strand…
The 12th London Korean Film Festival: Master Review
In the world where corruption and scams have become a multilevel maze, it is hard not to notice that the contemporary film industry started making more films that expose the current state of the world’s society, including politics, juridical system and commercial establishments. South Korean cinema is one of those tools that bring the aforementioned…
The 2nd London East Asia Film Festival: The Mimic Review
In 2013, Huh Jung’s feature directorial debut Hide and Seek was up against blockbusters such as The Terror Live, Flu and Snowpiercer, and no one expected that the low-budget thriller would on the domestic South Korean market become a hit alongside the three aforementioned productions. 4 years later, Huh Jung is back with The Mimic and it is as…
The 2nd London East Asia Film Festival: V.I.P Review
Park Hoon-jung, a South Korean filmmaker, has – thanks to his distinctive and thoughtful writing style – attracted a vast number of international and domestic viewers to Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw the Devil and Ryoo Seung-wan’s The Unjust. His directing skills then allowed him to make New World, an intriguing film and one of the most gripping Korean gangster productions…
The 2nd London East Asia Film Festival: Anarchist from Colony Review
For the past few years, Korean cinema has been swamped with various period films, in which the country’s turbulent history has been amalgamating fiction, action and frequently monotonous anti-Japanese propaganda. Although successful within the domestic market, it is rare for historical dramas to achieve an overseas 5-star rating; and one such film is Lee Joon-ik’s…
The 22nd Busan International Film Festival: A Tiger In Winter Review
The topic of a creative slowdown is popular among authors in all nooks and crannies of the creative dimension, since it is the ultimate “tiger” that prays upon the auteur world. With the tiger also being one of the strongest animal representations of Korea and its people, the layers of metaphor in the title of…
The 22nd Busan International Film Festival: ‘Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom?’ Review
Riding hot on the success of the last year’s Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name, producer Genki Kawamura dished out yet another animated, fantasy high-school romance film this year – but as highly expected as it was, the remake of the 1993 live-action TV drama of the same name, Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side…
The 22nd Busan International Film Festival: Australia Day Review
Australia Day is the official holiday – National Day – of Australia, celebrating the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the British to Port Jackson in New South Wales. It is a controversial holiday for many reasons, especially for the indigenous peoples of Australia. It is this day that was chosen as the titular background…
The 22nd Busan International Film Festival: Glass Garden Review
South Korean filmmaker Shin Su-won is one of those rare female Asian filmmakers that have managed to break through the male-dominated walls of the industry to not only get noticed, but acknowledged. Her debut, self-produced feature Passerby #3 managed to immediately snag both domestic and international attention – it even won the Best Asian-Middle Eastern Film…
VIEW OF THE ARTS 