Jeonju 2025 Review: SEA TIGER, Lo-Fi Experiment Boldly Tackles Sewol Tragedy

Eight years after Warriors of the Dawn, director Jung Yoon-chul returns with a far more intimate project that is all the more powerful and impressive due to its small scale. Recalling Lars Von Trier's Dogville, Sea Tiger takes place almost entirely on a barebones sound stage. Initially feeling like a filmed play, it steadily becomes an immersive and richly cinematic experience as the engrossing and emotional story takes hold.

The story, drawn from Kim Tak-hwan's novel 'Sea of Lies', recounts the experiences of divers who risked their lives to retrieve the bodies of the victims of the Sewol Ferry Sinking in 2014. Centered around diver Na Kyung-soo (Lee Ji-hoon), the action is split between the months after the tragedy, as divers searched the wreckage, and Kyung-soo and a trial that takes place later, when the government tries to pin the blame for another diver's death on Kyung-soo's senior, by which time Kyung-soo and his fellow divers are struggling with PTSD and alcoholism.

Though the stage is dressed with only the barest props and the digital camera Jung himself shoots with is considerably less sophisticated than what he has used on his other mainstream projects, Sea Tiger doesn't limit itself in a handful of crucial aspects, including its cast, terrific score and immersive sound design. This is a highly cinematic picture and the production's deliberate technical limitations quickly fade away. In some cases they likely enhance the film, such as in the harrowing underwater scenes, when Kyung-soo retrieves bodies from Sewol's wreckage--shot with Lee pretending to swim around a dry stage.

The film's highly experimental approach was likely precipitated by the lack of stable studio financing options in the current Korean film market, where precious few projects are being greenlit by nervous studios. However, it's an experiment that also benefits the film's subject. The Sewol Ferry Sinking of 2014 is an event that traumatized a nation and is still fresh in people's minds. Had it been a mainstream film, Sea Tiger's sensitive subject and subjective approach would likely have rubbed some people the wrong way, but as a low-budget feature shot almost entirely on a stage (the action occasionally shifts to minor locations such as stairs and a bathroom, which may well be in the same building), it manages to feel sincere rather than manipulative.

Jung's best films, which include Marathon and A Man Who Was Superman, deftly weave emotional earnestness and cinematic escapism and Sea Tiger manages to do the same thing on a shoestring budget, but rather than escape, this film forces viewers (particularly local ones) to face bottled up emotions, while still achieving marvellous catharsis.

While watching Sea Tiger, it's hard not to imagine what it would have looked and felt like on a full budget, but this is an experiment in storytelling that distills what it is about cinema that moves us while also staying true to the raw emotions of its difficult subject.