A photograph of a young woman posing in a swimsuit with her friends at Dadaepo beach in the 1980s might not seem important, but for South Korean filmmaker Mokya Shin, it changed the direction of Easter, his first feature documentary. The woman in the photograph was Saekja, now 68, who had spent much of her…
Category: In Conversation with
70th BFI London Film Festival: In Conversation with Shalini Adnani, Director of “Our Share of Sand”
Shalini Adnani knows what it means to belong to more than one place. Born and raised in Chile in a Sindhi family of Indian origin before later moving to London, the writer-director grew up with different cultures and, as she tells us, “two different value systems”. That experience found its way into her first feature,…
The A Festival: AM8IC on Music, Identity and Their Dark Fantasy World – Exclusive Interview
Watching K-pop from China and then moving to South Korea to train and eventually debut as K-pop artists turned out to be two very different experiences for AM8IC. Mingkai, Roux, Saho, Chungyi and Chen had all admired K-pop artists before becoming trainees themselves, but once the five members were living and training in Seoul, the…
The A Festival: One Role at a Time – TOP Piyawat on Acting, Preparation and What Comes Next – Exclusive Interview
TOP Piyawat describes preparing for a role in practical terms: learning, rehearsing and beginning again. “Every character is different, so I have to start from zero,” he tells View of the Arts. It is a brief answer, but a useful introduction to an actor whose work already includes romantic series, a crime drama and music…
Big Ocean on Their New Single, “Love Sign”, New York Fashion Week and Digital@UNGA – Exclusive Interview
PJ, Chanyeon and Jiseok have spent the past two years doing something no one before them had done in K-pop. As Big Ocean, the industry’s first hard-of-hearing idol group, they have had to find their own ways of singing, dancing, staying in time and performing while experiencing sound differently, but their hearing was never supposed…
The A Festival: ALAMAT on “Sinigang”, Filipino Culture and Their First Performance in France – Exclusive Interview
For ALAMAT, taking their music outside the Philippines has never meant changing who they are to make themselves easier for an international audience to understand, because the Filipino languages, sounds, stories and traditions in their work are not something they add for effect; they are simply part of who the group is. And now, as…
A Sound of His Own: WOW Talks “LOW”, Afrobeats and Going Solo – Exclusive Interview
When A.C.E debuted with CACTUS in 2017, WOW began a journey that would see him spend the next several years performing, making music and growing alongside the other four members. Since then, the group have moved through different sounds and concepts, never really staying in one place for too long, while WOW has built much…
coldrain’s Masato Talks “OPTIMIZE = OPTDEMISE”, Technology and Why Imperfection Matters – Exclusive Interview
After two decades in the music industry, watching the world around him change in ways that once seemed unimaginable, Masato is thinking about imperfection. Not how to eliminate it, hide it or polish it until nobody can see where the rough edges used to be, but whether those rough edges might be among the most…
The A Festival: In Conversation with Emmanuelle Amelin, Fouder and President of 5 Oceans Entertainment
Women have always been part of the machinery that keeps the entertainment industry moving, but increasingly they are the ones deciding how that machinery should work. Behind concerts, festivals, tours and international productions are women working as promoters, producers, strategists, publicists and company founders, often managing the less visible side of the business: negotiations, budgets,…
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF26): In Conversation with Miwa Nishikawa, Director of “Children Untold”
Miwa Nishikawa has spent more than two decades making films about people trying to find their place in a society that does not always know what to do with them. Born in Hiroshima and a graduate of Waseda University, she began her career working with Hirokazu Kore-eda before making her own directorial debut with Wild…
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF26): In Conversation with Kim Eo-jin of “The World Before”
For a young actor still at the beginning of his career, Kim Eo-jin already seems to understand what great acting is all about. After appearing in the 2021 web drama The Sweet Blood and later taking a leading role in Fragile in 2024, the model makes his feature-film debut in Yoon Dan-bi’s The World Before….
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF26): In Conversation with Sim Su-bin of “The World Before”
Sim Su-bin is still at the beginning of her acting career. So far, she has appeared in supporting roles in Korean dramas, alongside her film work, but Yoon Dan-bi’s The World Before gives her the space to show much more of what she can do. As seventeen-year-old Jin, a girl who has never left the…
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF26): In Conversation with Yoon Dan-bi, Director of “The World Before”
There is nothing overstated about Yoon Dan-bi’s films; her stories take shape through families sharing a home, young people spending time together, conversations that seem ordinary and feelings that are not always easy to explain. Her feature debut, Moving On (2019), follows teenage Okju and her younger brother as they move with their father into…
JIB DREAM FANMEET 7: Joong and Dunk – Roman Adventures, New Challenges and a Little “Dare You to Death” – Exclusive Interview
Rome had plenty of reasons to be loud that weekend, and JIB DREAM FANMEET 7 added a few more. Two days, some very excited fans and a line-up of much-loved Thai stars – the event certainly gave the city something to shout about, and yes, there was a lot of shouting. Joong Archen and Dunk…
