Tag: busan
Golden Horse 2025 Interview: DEAR STRANGER Director Tetsuya Mariko Talks Transnational Filmmaking, New York, and Puppet Theater
The director of Toei's first English-language feature talks puppets, New York, and transnational dialogues.
Busan 2025 Review: TIGER Charts the Challenges of a Queer Male Sex Worker in a Deeply Divided Japan
Inspired by real stories from Tokyo’s LGBTQ+ community, Anshul Chauhan’s Tiger follows a young man as he navigates the Japanese capital’s underground queer scene, while also struggling to reconcile his chosen lifestyle with the one he left behind. Tiger had...
Busan 2025 Interview: ALL GREENS Director Takashi Koyama Talks the High-School Drug-Dealing Dramedy You Didn't Know You Needed
A lively conversation with the mind behind a daring dramedy at this year's BIFF.
Busan 2025 Review: NO OTHER CHOICE, Park Chan-wook's Delirious Dark Comedy Is a Twisted Delight
After losing his job of 25 years, an increasingly frustrated family man is driven to the brink in his efforts to protect his comfortable life in Park Chan-wook’s outrageous black comedy, No Other Choice. After debuting at Venice the film...
Busan 2023 Review: GREEN NIGHT, Gloomy Feminist Noir Promises More Than It Delivers
Fan Bingbing and Lee Joo Young star in a road movie about women, directed by Han Shuai.
Busan 2022 Review: CONNECT Sees Miike Takashi Trade J-Horror for K-Drama
Miike Takashi becomes the first Japanese director to dip his toe into the ever-expanding world of K-dramas, helming all six episodes of Disney’s upcoming fantasy horror series Connect. Adapted from Shin Daesung’s webtoon of the same name, this ghoulishly entertaining...
Busan 2022 Review: BONES AND ALL, An All-Consuming Adolescent Love Story
Timothée Chalamet reunites with his Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino for another unconventional romance, the cannibal road movie Bones And All, adapted from Camille DeAngelis’ award-winning 2016 novel of the same name. Chalamet is just one of...
Busan 2022 Review: BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS, Pretentious but oh so Pretty
It has been seven years since Mexican filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s last film, the epic western The Revenant, which scored him his second consecutive Best Director Oscar after winning for Birdman the previous year. Considering the subject matter of his...
Busan 2020 Review: COALESCE Shows Cambodia as a Land Compromised by Opportunity
Three young men look to forge their own paths in the fast-developing Kingdom of Cambodia in French filmmaker Jessé Miceli’s keenly observed debut feature. Employing non-professional actors and an entirely Cambodian cast, what follows is a coherent and engaging story...
Busan 2020 Review: In THREE, Soviet Rule Made Monsters Of Everyone
A police intern becomes the lead investigator in one of the most gruesome and notorious murder cases in modern history, in Ruslan Pak's bleak and introspective new thriller. Inspired by the true story of Kazakh serial killer and cannibal Nikolai...
DEMONS: Take A First Look A Daniel Hui's Berlin Selected Dark Satire
Singpore director Daniel Hui wades right in to the thick of the debate around sexual politics, manipulation and abuse of power with his new feature Demons. Following a successful bow at the Busan International Film Festival the film has now...
SMALLER AND SMALLER CIRCLES: Watch The Gripping Trailer For Busan Selected Thriller
A Jesuit priest may not seem like the most obvious leader of a criminal investigation but that is exactly where Raya Martin turns with his Filipino thriller Smaller And Smaller Circles. About to have its world premiere in Busan, Screen...
Toronto 2015 Review: COLLECTIVE INVENTION Asks The Right Questions, But Has None Of The Answers
Wrapping a raft of social issues plaguing modern Korean society into a simple allegory, Collective Invention, a quirky new comedy-drama with dashes of the same humor found in Bong Joon-ho's work, is a succinct but relatively straightforward affair. The setting...
Busan 2014 Review: A MATTER OF INTERPRETATION Is David Lynch Meets Hong Sangsoo
Following his terrific debut Romance Joe (2011), Lee Kwang-kuk is back in Busan with A Matter of Interpretation, a breathless play on dream logic with smart plotting and a great script that proves he's no fluke, and then some. Frustrated...
Busan 2014 Review: DAUGHTER Explores The Ills Of Modern Korean Parenting
Following a pair of indulgent films that awkwardly straddled the balance between fantasy and reality, the multi-hyphenate Ku Hye-sun, a well known actress, singer and artist as well as director, returns with Daughter, her most mature work to date. An...
Busan 2014 Review: GIFTED Takes An Interesting Turn Before Veering Off Course
Taking its cue from the common social grievances often found in Korean indie dramas, Gifted, the sophomore effort of Poongsan (2011) helmer Jung Jai-hung, examines the friction between unemployment and consumerist ambitions in modern Korea. Slight and familiar, the film...
Toronto 2014 Review: Epic And Austere, ALIVE Depicts Dark Days For Korean Laborers
Incessantly grim and pushing the three-hour mark, indie helmer Park Jung-bum's Alive is about as challenging a sophomore work as anyone could have dreamt up. And this from a man who debuted with the ferociously bleak The Journals of Musan...
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Berlinale 2014 Review: SPROUT's Short and Sweet Seoul Odyssey
A little girl's trip to the market becomes a charming journey through modern Korea in Yoon Ga-eun's delightful short film Sprout, which premiered at the Busan International Film Festival last October. Korean indie cinema often makes a point of demonstrating...
Busan 2013 Review: The Devastating HAN GONG-JU Is A Hidden Gem
What is it that drives us to the cinema, time and again? What are we looking for when we enter a theater and the lights begin to fade? In answering that question you will often come across the words entertainment...
Busan 2013 Review: MISS VIOLENCE Is The Hardest Watch Of The Year
There is something terrifying about the uncanny nature of Miss Violence, a film that exists in mundane reality but for its attributes is very much alien to our world.A Greek household reacts so strangely to the sudden suicide of their...
