Tag: busaninternationalfilmfestival
Busan 2023 Review: In CONCERNING MY DAUGHTER, LGBT and Generational-Divide Themes Drive Poignantly Acted Drama
The most promising title in this year's Korean Cinema Today-Vision program, the section dedicated to introducing new Korean filmmakers at the Busan International Film Festival, Concerning My Daughter follows a woman's uncomfortable relationship with her daughter's same-sex partner, who comes...
Busan 2023 Review: THAT SUMMER'S LIE, Teen Pregnancy Rears Its Complicated Head in Wry, Audacious, Surprising Debut
The lines between truth and fiction blur marvellously in the audacious New Currents competition title That Summer's Lie, the debut film of director Sohn Hyun-lok. Other slippery lines toed by this surprising tale include the one between childhood and adulthood...
Busan 2022 Review: THE DREAM SONGS, Moving and Marvelous Portrait of Teen Friendship
For the past half a dozen years or so, some of the very best debut Korean films have chronicled friendships between young girls. Filled with the fleeting excitement of youth and the complex, mutable feelings that underpin the process of...
Busan 2022 Review: MOTHER LAND, Gorgeous Korean Stop Motion Animation Heads Out onto the Ice
Unlike Hollywood, France or Japan, Korea isn't known for any particular kind of animation. However, the country is overflowing with animators, and when not being outsourced to foreign productions, they churn out unique local films that each march to the...
Busan 2022 Review: A WILD ROOMER, Wry and Stimulating Character Study Delights
Screening in the Busan International Film Festival's signature New Currents competition section, A Wild Roomer, the delightfully droll debut of director Lee Jeong-hong, is a refreshing character study that unfurls around a minor mystery. The film begins much as it...
Busan 2022 Review: NEXT SOHEE, Bae Doona Shines in July Jung's Memorable Slowburn
Good things come to those who wait, and so it is with Next Sohee, the blunt and powerful new film from director July Jung, which bowed at the Cannes Film Festival this spring, following eight years after her sensational debut,...
Busan 2021 Review: THE APARTMENT WITH TWO WOMEN, Sensational Debut Is an Electric Dysfunctional Family Drama
One of the most dysfunctional families of recent memory has its dirty laundry aired out in the hypnotic The Apartment with Two Women, an ambitious and surprisingly mature debut from 29-year-old director Kim Se-in. In a barnstorming performance, Yang Mal-bok...
Busan 2020 Review: LIMECRIME, Tone Deaf Hip-hop Biopic
As a self-confessed Korean hip-hop ‘stan’, Limecrime is a dismal disappointment. This is Directed by the actual former Limecrime duo LEE Seunghwan and YOO Jaewook, who moved on from performing together in the early aughts and are no longer part...
Busan 2020 Review: THE PREDATORS, Stylish Italian Dark Comedy Debut
Twenty-eight year old newcomer Pietro Castellitto debuts with this assured, sharply scripted black comedy about class, wildly different families and the individuals that comprise them. It was frankly shocking to learn the Director of this film is so young, as...
Busan 2020 Review: GOOD PERSON Compels With Its Dizzying Morality Play
With confident direction in the first few frames alone, this debut feature from JUNG Wook is a masterful mystery. Good Person draws comparisons to European cinema; epic yet intimate portrayal of ethics, morality and human nature in the contemporary. These...
Busan 2020 Review: HAPPY OLD YEAR; Minimalist Design, Maximalist Selfishness
The philosophy or art of letting go; the artifice of such a belief or methodology questioned in a purposely staged environment is how Happy Old Year introduces its jaded protagonist Jean (Chutimon Chuengchar, Bad Genius). She is interviewed by a...
Busan 2019 Review: COMING HOME AGAIN, A Personal Chamber Piece on Food and Filial Piety
In Coming Home Again, a Korean American man returns home to take care of his dying mother in this modest and sensitively-rendered chamber piece that takes place in the span of one day on New Year’s Eve. Adapted from a...
Busan 2019 Review: LIGHT FOR THE YOUTH Conveys the Desperate Struggles of South Korea's Younger Generation
The acute hardships of South Korea’s youth and the dog-eat-dog mentality of the corporate workplace are the focus of writer-director Shin Su-won’s fourth feature, Light for the Youth. With Glass Garden (2017), Madonna (2015) and Pluto (2012), Shin’s previous films...
Busan 2019 Review: THE EDUCATION, A Life Lesson on Human Nature
In The Education, a young woman develops an unlikely relationship with a teenager when she is hired to take care of his severely disabled mother. One of three Korean features in the Busan International Film Festival’s New Currents competition section, director...
Busan 2019 Review: AN OLD LADY Addresses Elderly Rape, Ageing and Mortality
Premiering in the Busan International Film Festival’s New Currents competition section, Lim Sun-ae’s An Old Lady touches on the less-commonly addressed issue of elder sexual abuse in South Korea. A 69-year-old lady accuses a nursing assistant of rape at a...
Busan 2019 Review: KYUNGMI'S WORLD, Bleak and Unsparing Portrait of the Ties that Bind
In Kyungmi’s World, we never get to see the face of the titular Kyungmi. Instead, the main characters in the film are Soo-yeon (Kim Misu) – Kyungmi’s daughter – and her estranged grandmother Young-soon (Lee Young-ran), who reconnect for the...
Busan 2018 Review: ALPHA, THE RIGHT TO KILL Declaws Duterte's War on Drugs
Arriving hot on the heels of Eric Matti’s similarly plotted but decidedly more entertaining BuyBust, Brillante Mendoza’s Alpha, the Right to Kill is a down and dirty frontline take on Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial war on drugs. Seen from...
Busan 2018 Review: CITIES OF LAST THINGS, Noirish Tryptich Explores One Man's Broken Soul
Ho Wi Ding’s noir-tinged triptych details three nights in the life of troubled Taiwan police detective Zhang Dong Ling, as his turbulent personal life repeatedly triggers eruptions of murderous violence. Winner of the Platform Prize at this year’s Toronto International...
Busan 2018 Review: THE PREY Plays a Most Dangerous Game in the Cambodian Jungle
An undercover cop must fight for his life when he becomes an unwitting participant in a deadly game of cat and mouse in writer-director Jimmy Henderson's ambitious follow-up to prison riot throw-down Jailbreak, reworking Pichel and Schoedsack’s classic The Most Dangerous Game...
Busan 2018 Review: HOUSE OF HUMMINGBIRD Soars As It Signals Major New Talent
Exploring modern themes and history through the eyes of a young girl, Kim Bora's sensational debut House of Hummingbird is the Korean indie drama par excellence. A subtle exploration of local family and societal pressures crafted in a way that...
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