片单｜Summer of Seoul
programmed by tiff (https://www.tiff.net/films?series=summer-of-seoul&list)
Introduction by etalk and The Social’s Lainey Lui
The K-drama that helped start the Korean Wave, 2002’s Winter Sonata is necessary education for fans of the genre. It became a mega-hit throughout Asia and was a blueprint for many series and films that followed, including today’s most successful and recognizable dramas. The journey of talented musical student Joon-sang (Bae Yong-joon) and the innocent Yoo-jin (Choi Ji-woo) from friendship to first love, beset by familial obstacles and tragedy along the way, propelled Bae to superstardom and earned him the regal honorific of “Yonsama” from his Japanese fans. The series, so popular that it was credited with boosting South Korea’s “soft power” and facilitating geopolitical relationships, also spawned fashion trends, an anime, an industry of film-location tours, murals, and a musical.
ROBYN CITIZEN
The blockbuster thriller that put Park Chan-wook on the map as an auteur of New Korean Cinema, Joint Security Area broke box-office records when it was released in 2000, and firmly established Song Kang-ho as a leading actor. One night, an injured South Korean army sergeant, Lee Soo-hyeok (Lee Byung-hun), is rescued as he tries to cross from the north side of the Demilitarized Zone. He is fleeing an altercation that has left two North Korean soldiers dead and raised a number of questions as to why and how Sgt. Lee ended up on the other side of the border. The incident threatens to undo the delicate détente between the two nations, until the Neutral Nations Supervisory Committee (NNSC) brings in a Swiss Army major of Korean heritage, Sophie Jean (Lee Young-ae), who has her own complicated familial relationship with the Korean War, to lead a special investigation. As the testimonies of the surviving North Korean witness, Sgt. Oh Kyeong-pil (Song, in a commanding and charismatic performance), and South Korean Sgt. Lee continue to contradict each other, the latter soldier begins to emotionally unravel. The NNSC top brass is anxious to find a palatable explanation that will calm the growing tension on both sides. The major must work covertly to piece together the truth of what actually happened that night. A cultural artifact of the Sunshine Policy era’s political optimism, Joint Security Areaholds out tentative hope for common ground and communication, if not reunification, between the two Koreas. Indeed, in Sgt. Oh, the film offers a rare, fully fleshed-out North Korean character who is neither a spy nor a mere mouthpiece for political propaganda.
ROBYN CITIZEN
Content advisory: scenes of war, coarse language
4K Digital Restoration!
This end-of-the-millenium opus by writer-director Lee Chang-dong (Secret Sunshine, Burning) traverses 20 years (1979–1999) of defining events in Korean history through the story of Kim Yong-ho (Sol Kyung-gu), a middle-aged everyman seen rushing in despair towards a train as the film opens. A series of episodic flashbacks in reverse chronology trace how Yong-ho was shaped by, and sometimes actively complicit in, socio-political forces — the authoritarian period, the Democratization protests, and the IMF crisis of the late ’90s — as well as personal failures that hurt others and slowly unravelled his sense of self. A film that seamlessly blends social realism, melodrama, and Lee’s singular ability to depict human complexity, Peppermint Candy was produced during a pivotal transitional period for the South Korean film industry and helped to define New Korean Cinema as a distinct cinematic movement, making it essential viewing.
ROBYN CITIZEN
Content advisory: violence, sexual content, coarse language
Introduction by Hanbin Kim
Despite her agreeable and kind-hearted nature, 10-year-old Sun is bullied by a group of girls in her class. Just before classes end for vacation, Sun meets Jia, who is new to the school and the area, and the two spend their break becoming fast friends. Jia tells Sun exciting stories of her jet-setting family, while Sun’s mother and brother come to care for Jia as a member of their own family. As vacation comes to an end, the friends’ relationship begins to change. Jia notices that Sun is excluded by some of their classmates and, wanting to fit in, Jia begins to exclude her too. Confused and upset, Sun resorts to the same sort of bullying that has hurt her in the past. Their personal secrets revealed, Jia and Sun both end up excluded by their peers and without one another for support. Written and directed by Yoon Ga-eun — whose short film Sproutwon the Crystal Bear in the 2014 Berlin Film Festival’s Kplus competition — this moving and true-to-life film explores the profound impact of the ostracization experienced by many young students.
Official Selection, 2016 TIFF Kids International Film Festival
Content advisory: violence, bullying, frightening scenes, coarse language
35mm Print!
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance explores the lengths to which honest people will go when circumstances push them into tight places. Deaf and individualistic, Ryu (Shin Ha-kyun) works at a factory and spends his spare time with his beloved sister (Im Ji-eun) and his offbeat girlfriend, Yeong-mi (Bae Doona). When he loses his job, Ryu takes desperate measures and becomes entangled in dangerous underworld activities. He soon winds up on the wrong side of his former employer, Park Dong-jin (Song Kang-ho), a dark force to be reckoned with. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is a brilliantly constructed film and a brutal tale that Park imbues with a visceral atmosphere of overwhelming claustrophobia and desperation. Not for the faint of heart, the bitter irony of the film’s bloody ending is that neither Ryu nor Dong-jin are violent by nature or vocation, making the film all the more affecting. Rather than glorifying cruelty, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance investigates the ways in which social conditions may push ordinary people down a slippery slope towards destruction. Park’s exceptional film draws upon his own sympathy — not for vengeance itself, but for the pain that spawns it.
2002 Toronto International Film Festival
Content advisory: violence, sexually suggestive scenes, coarse language
Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004, Park Chan-wook’s revenge masterpiece is credited with bringing Korean cinema to mainstream attention in North America. The film begins on a dark and stormy night when an ordinary man, Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), is kidnapped and inexplicably imprisoned in a tiny room for 15 years. Finally freed by his unseen, anonymous captor, the revenge-hungry Dae-su finds himself enmeshed in an even larger and more sadistic web.
A sweeping crescendo of ferocious violence punctuated by squirm-inducing acts of mutilation — the unfortunate fate of a live octopus is already cinema legend — Oldboytreads the delicate line between art and exploitation with fierce intelligence and gleefully ostentatious high style.
Content advisory: violence, sexually suggestive scenes, nudity
35mm Print!
The apotheosis of revenge wears red eyeshadow and an intense, angelic look in Park Chan-wook’s last entry in his dazzling Vengeance Trilogy. Lady Vengeance is a perilous venture into the psychology of a woman pursuing her personal sense of justice — without ever finding salvation. Lee Geum-ja (Lee Young-ae) has been imprisoned for 13 years for allegedly kidnapping and murdering a six-year-old boy. With her fascinating mixture of evil wisdom and naïveté, she wastes no time in winning over her cellmates’ sympathies; all the prisoners become instrumental in the scheme Geum-ja has meticulously drafted for her future as a free woman.
Walking a thin tightrope between compassion and repulsion, Park confidently masters the complex narrative of this scalding moral tale. He sculpts edgy characters whose strength is defined by their ambiguity: irreparably damaged by wrongs committed against them, their obsessive drive for revenge nonetheless takes on a sinister hue. Without failing to cast a piercing glance at a society that abandons its citizens to their own private rule of law, Lady Vengeance investigates the lonely recesses of a lucid, wounded mind and renders the astonishing portrait of a sombre heroine whose heart is as pure — and as cold — as snow.
GIOVANNA FULVI
Official Selection, 2005 Toronto International Film Festival
Content advisory: explicit violence, sexually suggestive scenes
Hong Sang-soo’s meta-feature about the intersection of passion, cinema, and reality will be preceded by an extended introduction from Dennis Lim, Artistic Director of the New York Film Festival, and followed by a book signing of Lim’s most recent publication, Tale of Cinema.
Having premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Hong Sang-soo’s sixth feature film remains — amid a vertiginously prolific filmography that has yielded 21 films since — one of the filmmaker’s major touchstones, not least because it introduces his use of zooms and voiceover. A mirrored, twice-told tale emblematic of Hong’s oft-cited cubist approach, Tale of Cinema is, as its title suggests, “a tale of what cinema can do to those [like us!] in its thrall” (Dennis Lim).
In the first story, depressive student Sang-won (Lee Ki-woo) runs into an old flame, Young-shil (Uhm Ji-won). After a night of copious drinking and fumbling foreplay in a hotel room, they engage in a suicide pact. The second story focuses on Dong-soo (Kim Sang-kyung), a recent film-school graduate who, while exiting a cinema, sees a woman he believes to be the actress (also named Young-shil) from the film he has just watched — which, incredibly, may have been inspired by his life.
Employing an amusing mise en abyme that simultaneously connects and separates these two different destinies, Hong provides both a reflection on and a counterpoint to perceptions of truth, while exploring a discordant generation gap (amidst other romantic foibles) at the junction between real life and its representation in art. Tale of Cinema’s “ramped-up manipulations of time and continuity, fusions of reality and fantasy, and speculative dramatization of alternate worlds show a cinematized mind at work in real time” (Richard Brody, The New Yorker).
ANDRÉA PICARD
Content advisory: reference to suicide; sexual content
Introduction by Hanbin Kim
We’ve all had to deal with the unbearable loneliness of adolescence, and Bora Kim’s debut feature addresses this through one of the sincerest coming-of-age stories in recent memory. Set in 1994 Seoul, the film follows 14-year-old Eun-hee (Park Ji-hu) as she faces the trials and tribulations of growing up and finding her identity. With middle-school heartbreak, a new cram-school professor, and a complicated family life, Eun-hee endures it all alone — with lots of angst and tears. The film places great emphasis on the simple details of daily life and the small intricacies of Eun-hee’s relationships. With a hazy, nostalgic feel, House of Hummingbird will throw you back into your childhood, with the all-too-familiar themes of growing pains and seclusion. Kim beautifully tells the story in a way where you feel you’re part of Eun-hee’s life, going on a journey of self-discovery with her.
DEVIN MACHADO, 2018–2020 TIFF NEXT WAVE COMMITTEE
Official Selection, 2020 TIFF Next Wave Film Festival
Content advisory: depictions of/references to child abuse
Director's Cut!
Park Chan-wook’s cheeky take on Émile Zola’s scandalous serialized 19th-century novel Thérèse Raquin puts a modern, globalized spin on vampire mythology. The filmmaker’s frequent collaborator Song Kang-ho plays Sang-hyun, hot priest to Tae-ju, the repressed wife of his childhood friend. The two men reunite after news of Sang-hyun’s miraculous recovery from the fatal Emmanuel Virus — contracted through a failed vaccine experiment — spreads beyond his awed parishioners and into the wider community. However, the blood transfusion that cured Sang-hyun of the deadly virus has infected him with an undeadly one that intensifies all of his appetites. Tae-ju, not as guileless as she initially seems, becomes increasingly attracted to Sang-hyun’s secret life and compromised moral landscape. A darkly humorous examination of desire, Korean globalization, and missionary Christianity, Thirst manages to inject one of the most familiar figures of gothic horror with new life.
ROBYN CITIZEN
Print courtesy of the Korean Film Archive.
Content advisory: violence, sexual content, coarse language
In-person introduction by University of Toronto professor Dr. Michelle Cho
4K Digital Presentation!
The great Im Kwon-taek is one of South Korea’s most important and prolific filmmakers. His work is distinguished by its spectacular, epic cinematography depicting the varied and beautiful landscape of his homeland. Im is also the finest living chronicler of Korean culture, centring his much-loved nation and its arts. Radiant, exuberant, and passion-filled, Chunhyang is Im’s most accessible work by far.
The film’s ingenious structure sees a traditional Pansori singer recounting a complex 18th-century epic before a large contemporary audience. The story concerns Mongryong, the son of a provincial governor, and Chunhyang, a young lady of great dignity who happens to be the daughter of a retired courtesan. Despite their class difference, the pair fall deeply in love. Eventually, Mongryong breaks the news that he must return to Seoul for court examinations, promising to make Chunhyang his wife as soon as he has received a commission from the king. But in his absence, a brutal new governor named Byun is inducted and, hearing of Chunhyang’s beauty, orders her to become his mistress. When Chunhyang refuses, Byun imprisons her and sentences her to death for disobeying him. Will Mongryong return to save the day? Will true love be allowed to shine once more? Only the Pansori singer can say.
NOAH COWAN
Official Selection, 2000 Toronto International Film Festival
Print courtesy of the Korean Film Archive.
Content advisory: sexually suggestive scenes, nudity
K-Mania: The Popularity of Korean Film and Culture
This event features a pre-recorded introduction by filmmakers Jerome Yoo and Andrea Bang before a screening of the short film Idols Never Die
As we celebrate New Korean Cinema in our Summer of Seoul series, we are thrilled to host a panel of experts — University of Toronto professor Dr. Michelle Cho; film critic, journalist, and podcaster Carolyn Hinds; and PhD student Grayson Lee — to discuss the films, music, dramas, and fandom that make up the cultural phenomenon of the Korean Wave.
Content advisory: The short film being shown as part of this event contains bullying, mild violence, and coarse language
Idols Never Die
Jerome Yoo CANADA | 2019 | Korean 17 minutes
The mysterious death of K-pop idol N.D. forces the members of a high-school fan club — with plenty of their own internal drama — to come together and fulfill his final wish, with the help of what seems to be a hidden message in his songs.
Introduction by Hanbin Kim
Jeon Go-woon’s debut film examines the conflicts between personal happiness and universal values, and the weight of contradictions a person has to endure. Set in contemporary Seoul, Microhabitat follows Miso (Esom), a housemaid with three mandatory indulgences: cigarettes, a glass of whisky at the end of the day, and emotional intimacy with her boyfriend. Unable to afford the rising prices of rent and cigarettes, she abandons her home and visits her ex-bandmates for shelter. Miso’s expectations of her old friends collapse as she realizes they are no longer the same passionate, dear people she knew during their youth. Freedom seems mentally satisfying, but it is physically arduous and unstable.
From the fresh perspective of a brilliant new director, this film poses a challenging question to those of us who live excessively materialistic lifestyles: would you give up the comfort of your home for cigarettes and whisky?
HANBIN KIM
Content advisory: coarse language, mature theme
Pre-recorded introduction by film critic and writer Karen Han
35mm Print!
Bong Joon-ho followed the smash success of The Host with this darkly stylish thriller. The magnificent Kim Hye-ja stars as the doting mother of a grown son with an intellectual disability. When a young female student is brutally murdered and her son is fingered as the culprit, the middle-aged matriarch swings into action to prove his innocence by any means necessary. As he did in Memories of Murder, Bong balances humour and horror to stunning effect, while Kim — one of South Korea’s most legendary actresses — creates an indelible portrait of motherly devotion taken to its most ruthless extreme.
Content advisory: violence, sexually suggestive scenes, coarse language
35mm Print!
Inspired by a boyhood fantasy, Bong Joon-ho brought his producer a picture of Seoul’s Han River with an image of the Loch Ness monster Photoshopped in — and thus The Host was born. In this truly original and audacious creature feature, a lazy afternoon alongside the Han is shattered when a large, unidentified mass hanging from a bridge reveals itself to be a slobbering monstrosity that snatches away the young daughter of dimwitted snack vendor, Gang-du (Song Kang-ho, a recurring star in Bong’s films). With the city shut down by the government and their American “advisors,” Gang-du and his family — including his alcoholic, ex-radical brother and Olympic archer sister — go on the lam to try and retrieve the girl from the monster’s slimy clutches. Frightening, funny, and fantastically well-made, The Host became Bong’s calling card to North American audiences.
Content advisory: violence, coarse language
Pre-recorded introduction by Hanbin Kim
Known for frequent depictions of violence against women in her short films, Kim Mijo was recognized as a provocative emerging director when Gull won the Grand Prize at the 21st Jeonju International Film Festival. Kim’s debut feature follows Obok (Jung Ae-hwa), a mother and wife in Seoul who has contentedly sacrificed her own ambitions to support her family. Obok is a stallholder in a food market that is threatened by impending gentrification. Days before her eldest daughter’s wedding, Obok is sexually assaulted by a fellow stallholder, who is also the chairman of the redevelopment committee. She attempts to repress her trauma, but her anger continues to grow until she finally reveals the truth to her eldest daughter and contacts the police. However, justice seems hopeless due to a lack of concern from the authorities. And instead of support from her family and community, Obok is confronted with resentment, shame, and despair — but against all odds, she speaks up to protect her dignity. Gullexpresses strong opposition to secondary victimization, which forces the victim to remain silent and distracted from the fact of the actual crime. Kim’s film is a masterful blend of unsettling social issues, compact composition, and the boldness of a new director, making it one of the most dominant Korean films about women in recent years.
HANBIN KIM
Content advisory: themes of and references to sexual assault (implied), violence, coarse language
Both screenings will feature an onstage introduction
A profoundly enigmatic take on Haruki Murakami’s short story “Barn Burning,” Lee Chang-dong’s exploration of a vexed ménage à trois in contemporary Seoul begins as working-class would-be writer Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) encounters Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo), a young woman who used to go to his school, and agrees to take care of her cat while she travels to Africa. She returns with a new “friend” in tow: a handsome, refined, and wealthy man whose name, Ben (Steven Yeun), seems to signal his international aspirations but whose vocation remains mysterious. As the men fall into an uneasy relationship — the obsessed Jong-su is both fascinated by Ben’s upscale lifestyle and jealous of his suave hold on Hae-mi — the fate of the drifty young woman in the middle seems increasingly imperilled. Despite its incendiary title, Lee’s supremely subtle character study is less inferno than slow burn, growing ever more ominous with its unsettling shifts in tone and disturbing revelations about its three characters. “Chilling and brilliant” (The Guardian).
Content advisory: violence, sexual content, nudity, substance abuse
