South Korea’s biggest cinema chain CJ CGV will hold special screenings of seven movies with Cannes-winning director Park Chan-wook and actor Song Kang-ho, from Thursday to June 29. “To celebrate director Park Chan-wook and actor Song Kang-ho winning the awards, we created this special screening event to share a meaningful achievement of Korean cinema which raised its reputation,” CGV official Ye...

Broker (Korea) Opened June 8 Drama Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda So-young (IU) leaves her child in a baby box in front of a church. Sang-hyun (Song Kang-ho) and Dong-soo (Gang Dong-won) secretly steal the baby to sell him to a family who cannot legally adopt. So-young returns to the church the next day to retrieve the baby and finds out that Sang-hyun and Dong-soo have taken the child. Soon,...

“I don’t know why I was kind of mean to my dad,” says Bong Hyo-min, recalling his childhood. Growing up under two filmmakers, film has always been part of his life. But it wasn’t until he became a director himself that he started understanding his dad, Bong Joon-ho, a little more. Now a rising director himself, working under the mononym Hyomin, he is on his journey to discovering how he can make...

The Korean actor added that the Japanese director seems to have a special insight into people which makes him a great communicator. When Song was asked to compare Kore-eda to “Parasite” director Bong Joon-ho, the actor began by talking about their similarities “There is a lot in common. They are both geniuses. They both allow actors to feel a sense of freedom and they help actors to be more cre...

Reading the Japanese version was crucial for Bae, due to missing ellipses in the Korean version of the script. The Korean actor believes that punctuation marks can contain a lot of the emotions of the characters. “I think it is good that I can read more than one language,” Bae added. During the interview, she also recalled the moment that IU, also known as Lee Ji-eun, asked her about the direct...

Actor Gang Dong-won was skeptical at first as to whether the sentiment that flows in the heartwarming film “Broker” would come across well to Western audiences, although the film touches on the universal subject of abandoned children. “I was surprised to see audiences at Cannes Film Festival crying while watching the movie. I was relieved that the film received recognition,” the veteran actor sa...

When singer-actress Lee Ji-eun played single mother So-young in “Broker,” she constantly thought about a special viewer she has known since filming at an orphanage when she was a teenager. “I met many children there, but there is a friend who is especially close to me. I had to think if any line or acting in the film could hurt that friend’s feelings,“ Lee said during a press interview Tuesday a...

In the film, Seo had to perform mostly in English as she mainly worked with English-speaking subordinate agent Tom (Justin John Harvey). “Before shooting the film, I had an English teacher. Once we started shooting on Jeju Island, I got help from Justin, who played Tom in the film,” Seo said. “If the lines were in Korean, I can adjust it a bit or improvise, but with English lines, it was not pos...

Seoul Independent Film Festival will take part in film screening events to introduce Korean independent movies in Spain and Hong Kong. The SIFF will introduce selected independent Korean films at Korea Fest BCN 2022, held at Cinemes Boliche in Barcelona, Spain for five days from June 15 to 19. There will be an Indie Seoul section during the film festival in Spain, which will screen five selecte...

“Broker” hits local theaters Wednesday.

The Korean action comedy "The Roundup," starring "Eternals" star Ma Dong-seok, topped 9 million accumulated viewers Monday, data showed. On its 20th day on the big screen Monday, the sequel to the 2017 hit movie "The Outlaws" has nabbed more than 9 million in attendance, according to data from the Korean Film Council. The detective action flick released May 18 is continuing to shatter pandemic-...

Hommage (Korea) Opened May 26 Drama Directed by Shin Su-won Director Ji-wan (Lee Jung-eun) is in a slump. She aims to entice 200,000 patrons to her new film but finds it difficult to reach her goal. Her family provides little support. One day Ji-wan gets a part-time job restoring an old film about the country‘s first female judge created by first-generation female director Hong Eun-won. Thro...

“I wanted to do it differently this time. It is a story of a woman who hides her feelings so I wanted to make the audience want a closer look into her mind. It had to be done carefully to show the subtle changes in her feelings. To do that, I had to limit any provocative elements,” he said. “If my film is music, it is a song with a singer who sings with a delicate and soft voice, so I thought tha...

The sci-fi action adventure film "Jurassic World Dominion" has set the best opening-day record in South Korea during the COVID-19 pandemic, box office data showed Thursday. The latest installment of the "Jurassic Park" franchise garnered 763,000 viewers upon its debut Wednesday, accounting for 52.9 percent of the tickets sold on the day, according to the Korean Film Council (KOFIC). It marked t...