New Korean Films: Let's Make Up the Delay Part II (2015 Week 26-30)

After more than two months of silence, I'm finally back for more discussion about Korean films getting released every week. Since I've missed a lot of interesting films and that I couldn't make my mind to just resume my weekly article as if nothing happened, I've decided that it was better to still present every film released during that period and to add my usual commentary only for the most important of them. This is the second part, covering the films released between June 22nd and August 2ndd, and you can read the first part here.

By Fabien Schneider

Director's CUT

(디렉터스 컷)

After spending a decade making independent short films, Haegang is now ready for his debut long feature. But his life is becoming a mess: his girlfriend just broke up with him, and his former team doesn’t want to have anything to do with him. As he has to work with a new producer, he’ll have to stay strong if he wants to keep his own vision in his film.

Click to read more»

Top 10 Korean Films of 2013

The time has come once again for me to sit down and think about all the new Korean films I had the opportunity to see in 2013 and come up with my favorites. This year, I had a lot to choose from for this ritual as I've seen about 120 local films, so the task proved more difficult than usual.

With 127 million tickets sold and a remarkable nine Korean films featuring in the yearly top ten at the box office, 2013 was a huge year for Korean cinema. Prosperity does not always mean quality and the last few years have been disappointing as far as commercial Korean films have been concerned. Thankfully, in 2013 the industry succeeded in both attracting viewers to multiplexes and putting out high quality fare. That said, I still find myself more partial to the more fertile grounds of independent cinema, as seven low budget films made the list this year. While two films truly blew me away over the last 12 months today's industry still isn't putting out quite the same amount of gems as it was around ten years ago.

Click to read more»