Digital Short Film Omnibus Project Twentidentity, Vol. 1
In order to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Korean Film Academy, 20 of the academy's former students (who are respected director's today) were invited to shoot an omnibus movie consisting of 20 short films. Overall this work was very well received by the critiques at the 17th Tokyo International Film Festival. Films include Under a Big Tree, Sutda, Twenty Millimeter Thick, Innocence, *?!#@$ Up Shoes, Twenty Questions, The Twenty's Law, To the 21st, Pass Me and Alone Together.
Hyun-seung Lee
Jang Hyeon-su
Hur Jin-ho
Joe Min-ho
Kim Eui-suk
Lee Soo-youn
Kim Tae-yong
Park Kyung-hee
Yu Young-sik
Oh Byung-chul
Casts & Crew
Cho Eun-sook
Chu Sang-mi
Hwang Jung-min
Kwon Hyeong-joon
Kim Su-hyeon
Kim Yeon-jae
Nam Moon-chul
Woo Hyeon
Lee Jeong-heon
Yum Jung-ah
Chae Eun-seok
Kim In-kwon
Park Lydia
Chun Jung-myung
Choi Deok-moon
Kim Sang-won
No Seung-beom
Bong Tae-gyu
Sa Hyeon-jin
Jang Ju-yeong
Hwang Seok-jeong
Nam Ji-yeon
Shim Jae-rim
Yoon Seon-bin
Choi Hak-rak
Lee Su-jeong
Hwang Jin
Jeon Hye-jin
Jeong Seok-yong
Jo Hee-Bong
Kim Young-jae
Yoon Jin-seo
Jo Jun-hyeong
Also Directed by Hyun-seung Lee
Eun-joo moves out of her house "Il Mare", leaving behind a Christmas card for the eventual new owner of the house in 1999. In it she asks him/her to forward any mail of hers to her new address in the city. It is 1997 and Sung-hyun, the first owner of "Il Mare" is moving in and finds in his mailbox the Christmas card from Eun-joo. Thinking it was a joke, Sung-hyun leaves her a letter telling her so and reminds her that its 1997 not 1999. Eventually the two realize that they are separated by two years of time but can somehow communicate through the mailbox and begin to form a friendship through their letters.
Soo-jeong is camping on Jukdo Beach, while Jeong-yong has left there for a long time and returned. Soo-jeong and Jeong-yong inevitably meet surfing on the beach. Besides, Jukdo Beach, which emerged as a surfing hot place, gets sick and tired of the heat as time goes by and the girl surfer Bi-joo is finally destined to leave there.
Sang-min faces sexual discrimination at her advertising job and her lover's publishing company goes bankrupt. However she is determined to find a solution to both their problems
Includes shorts: Girl on the Run, The Theory & Practice of Teenage Dream, Relay, U and Me and Blue Birds on the Desk.
Retired mob boss Du-heon enrolls in a cooking class with the hopes of making a fresh start as a restaurant owner. In the class he meets a quirky girl, Se-bin, and finds himself drawn to her. Despite his determination to wipe the slate clean, Du-heon is summoned back into the criminal fold by his old colleagues.
Also Directed by Jang Hyeon-su
Can a childhood crush survive into adulthood?
A man laboring at a swanky restaurant works himself to the bone to ensure his son can afford to study law and become a prosecutor. He feels it gives his own life value, even if it comes at the cost of hurting his son.
Two men fall in love with the same woman. One man is a thief and the other is a graduate student that wants to take her away from a tough environment.
A car wash attendant Yong-dae decides move to Seoul with his girlfriend Tae-suk for join the most dangerous gang Yu Kwangcheon. On the way to Seoul they lost entire of savings to a swindler Man-su whom the most wanted by Yu Kwangcheon.
A mysterious stranger seduces three sisters in this sensual romantic comedy from director Jang Hyeon-Su.
Hae-Gon, Joon-Hyung and Hak-Rak are everyday guys, working at a local taxi company. Men of marked individuality, many wonder how they keep company with each other. After a bulky day of work, one and only diversion they can share is drinking in a local bar with silly jokes. Discontented with their miserable life, they finally decide to do something big, which they believe this is very and last opportunity to take an abrupt turn of their life. However, their plan makes a wrong turn, just like their pathetic life.
Kil is a professional hitman, who leads a very lonely life composed of a pack of Marlboro, instant noodle, cash in the freezer, a knife, a motorcycle and Chichi, a pet monkey. But when he bumped into a beautiful call girl Suha, his life could never be the same...
Also Directed by Hur Jin-ho
When stricken with a terminal disease, Young-su leaves his careless high life in the city, live-in girlfriend and dwindling business. He retreats to a sanatorium in the countryside in order to treat his illness, where he meets a young woman who is a resident patient there. Soon they develop feelings for each other and leave the sanatorium together to live in a small but cozy farm house. Their health improves dramatically but when Young-su’s friends from the city come for a visit, he starts to wonder if he should abandon mundane rural village and return to his former lifestyle.
It’s a sweltering summer, but Jung-won, a terminally ill, thirty-something photographer, is already in the winter of his life when he begins a tentative romance with a young traffic cop who doesn’t know about his condition. Is their relationship doomed before it even begins?
A sweet, mellow romance about a a woman with a visual impairment and the man who grows to love her after they meet in a photography club.
The partnership between Haneul and Bora start wavering in the midst of launching their startup when their firefighting thermal imaging camera project fails followed by a notice to move out of their studio due to outstanding monthly rent. As things go from bad to worse, a strange man suddenly appears in the middle of their studio, insisting that the place is his factory…
In this anthology film centered around the theme of "Eros," five seperate stories are presented by five top Korean directors. The main characters from each segment are connected with each other in one way or another.
Under the oppressive Japanese colonial rule, Deok-hye, the last Princess of the declining Joseon Dynasty, is forced to move to Japan. She spends her days missing home, while struggling to maintain dignity as a princess. After a series of failed tries, Deok-hye makes her final attempt to return home with help of her childhood sweetheart, Jang-han.
A recording engineer falls for a radio announcer after they work together to capture sounds of the natural world.
A man and a woman meet in the hospital after their respective partners are involved in a car accident and learn that they've been having an affair.
Dangerous Liaisons is a Chinese film by Hur Jin-ho based on the novel with the same title by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.
Also Directed by Joe Min-ho
8 contestants compete for a billion wons ($1 Million USD) in a survival reality TV show. The challengers must spend 7 days in the Australian desert. On the second day, one contestant is found dead. The other contestants then find themselves in horrifying situations as they deal with each others' lies and deceits.
Ki-tae and Chul-soo are trying to make a mark in the world, but the world won’t let them! These two are willing to do "anything" for money, but of course nothing goes right. When Chul-soo scores a big bag of the "White Powder," their prayers might have just been answered! With the help of Meg, a local prostitute, and her connections, the three embark on a road-trip that might lead them to all their dreams, or their graves.
Su-hyun wants to leave the syndicate and opens a small restaurant. Helping his life-long friend from an orphanage, he gets arrested for a murder that he didn't commit. To catch the real killer, he hurts himself in prison and is transported to the hospital. Sung-woo is a homicide detective. His wife has left him, and his son's life is in jeopardy. He can't afford to pay the hospital bills, not to mention the liver transplant needed to save his son's life. To make matters worse, he gets reprimanded at work for walking out on his undercover post, which led to the death of his partner. Having gotten drunk out of guilt, he creates a scene at the funeral for his late colleague and gets kicked out, only to end up becoming a hostage of a jail breaker, Su-hyun.
During Japanese colonial rule, YU Gwan-sun is imprisoned for starting the March 1 Movement, a peaceful protest for Korea’s independence. Undaunted, YU unites her fellow inmates to resist Japan. The Japanese security chief senses the resistance, entices an inmate to find out YU Gwan-sun is behind it, then tortures her. Later, Gwan-sun pretends to obey the Japanese while secretly planning another independence protest. This movement spreads beyond prison to the streets, and YU is subjected to merciless torture again. Though she dies two days before she is set to be released, her spirit is more liberated and free than ever.
Also Directed by Kim Eui-suk
A maternity ward nurse meets and falls in love with an obiturary columnist. Despite their apparent happiness, the nurse begins to feel that something is terribly wrong with their relationship.
Han-kook starts to work as an apprentice chef at a Chinese restauraunt belonging to his father's friend, but rather than follow the painstaking process of preparing the food by hand, Han-kook begins to use pre-processed ingredients.
This film is a social comedy which depicts women's endeavor to get the right to live free from men's violence in a male dominated society. This Film begins with a newly married couple. They wed against the wishes of family and friends, who thought they weren't a good match. As their marriage progresses, the young couple realize that marriage is not what you see in movies or read in books. They find that love, sex and marriage are very different from what they had dreamed. They also understand why people disagreed with the marriage from the beginning.
Kingdom of Joseon, ancient Korea. A usurper has conquered the throne. His ministers are being systematically eliminated by a mysterious assassin. An arrogant master swordsman is in charge of putting an end to the carnage.
A hotel bellboy having recently been dumped falls in love with a leg model who's a regular guest at the hotel' she and her lover meet regularly in room 901. One day, her lover gets killed in a hit-and-run accident. Also around this hotel is a telephone operator, whom wishes to waste her time. Her fixation is with a taxi ride. When she gets into a cab, she doesn't tell the driver where to go, and the driver doesn't ask. They just speed along the city at night.
Also Directed by Lee Soo-youn
"The Goggles" tells a story of Ji-young and her attempts to discover purpose. Through her discovery of parallels between swimming and her life and the dynamic relationship with her swimming coach, she can realize the complexities of life.
Dr. Seung-hoon sedates his landlord before medical check-up, when the old man begins telling him a convincing murder confession. Sometime later, a young woman's severed head is discovered at a butcher shop run by his landlord's son, and Seung-hoon begins to suspect that the landlord and his son are the serial killers.
An omnibus of four films by Korean directors exploring the meaning of family
Impaired by amnesia, Jeong-won (Shin-yang Park) can't remember his youth -- until he meets Yeon (Ji-hyun Jun), a psychic who may be able to uncover his past. After witnessing the horrific deaths of children, both share dreamlike visions of ghostly forms. Together, they explore the depths of psychological terror in this chilling Korean thriller, artfully directed by Su-yeon Lee.
Also Directed by Kim Tae-yong
What is beauty? Truth created from whith lie.
A superb package of shorts by four leading East Asian directors: Ann Hui on a male-to-female sex change, Kim Tae-yong on an emotional imposture, Gu Changwei on pregnancy in China and Tsai Ming-Liang on time and the city of Hong Kong.
In this adaptation of theatrical drama Kkokdu by Kim and music director Bang Junseok, two children who sold their grandmother’s shoes to buy a puppy end up going to the underworld.
Anna learns in prison that her mother has passed away in Seattle. Prison officials grants Anna a three day furlough to attend her mother's funeral. Anna embarks on a long trip to Seattle. Hoon is a Korean immigrant who works as a gigolo. Hoon is now on the run from a wealthy client's furious husband. These two seemingly lost souls are about to share three memorable days together.
In a virtual world called "Wonderland", a place where people can reunite with a person they may not meet again by simulating them through artificial intelligence, a woman in her 20s requests to meet his lover who is in a coma, and a man in his 40s requests to meet his wife who passed away.
Ryoo Seungwan, Han Jiseung, Kim Taeyong got together to make a 3D omnibus film. It's a 3D vision of terrible realities never far from popular culture today. The stages of its episodes are different with one another. Tragedies and fantasies unfold in the city, the woods, and the future. The 3D technique is used in scenes where the characters have fancies to get over suffering in reality. It's interesting to watch 3D scenes directed by representative directors of Korea, and it's noteworthy in terms of industry that this try displays the possibilities and realities of 3D film in Korea, as well. It's the new vision of KAFA's project, KAFA+
A documentary following the Korean rock band YB as they go on a tour of Europe.
Family Ties is an ensemble drama from Kim Tae-yong, the co-director of chiller Memento Mori. The film tells three seemingly unconnected stories in a trilogy of distinct segments. The first part is the story of a woman (Moon So-ri - Oasis, A Good Lawyer's Wife) who has to deal with her long-lost brother's surprise visit. After having been missing for several years, the brother (played by Um Tae-ung - Revenge) appears and moves in, with his new wife in tow - a much older woman, Mu Shin (Ko Doo-sim - More Beautiful Than A Flower). The second story features a searing performance from Gong Hyo-jin (Memento Mori) as a short-tempered young woman, who discovers that her estranged mother (Kim Hye-ok), with whom she has had a falling out, is terminally ill. Part three examines the relationship problems faced by a young couple (Bong Tae-gyu from See You After School and Jeong Yu-mi from Blossom Again).
Includes shorts: Girl on the Run, The Theory & Practice of Teenage Dream, Relay, U and Me and Blue Birds on the Desk.
In this second installment of the Whispering Corridors series, a young girl finds a strange diary, capable of arousing hallucinations, kept by two of her senior fellow-students who seem to have an unusually close bond.
Also Directed by Park Kyung-hee
Commissioned by South Korea's National Human Rights Commission, If You Were Me is an innovative omnibus film project to promote tolerance and human rights and shed light on the hardships disadvantaged people face in Korea. After the success of the first anthology, a second series, If You Were Me 2, was released this year. Five notable Korean directors - Park Kyung Hee (A Smile), Ryoo Seung Wan (Crying Fist), Jung Ji Woo, Jang Jin (Guns & Talks), and Kim Dong Won - participated in the second installment, creating shorts on human rights issues of their choosing.
This debut feature from female Korean director Park Kyung-hee tells the story of a photographer whose life is changed indelibly when she discovers she has a rare disease which causes tunnel vision and possible eventual blindness. Divided into four sections, it depicts the break-up of her relationship with her boyfriend, her problems with her old-fashioned family, her attempts to deal with her disease through her art and, finally, her desire to fly an airplane before she loses her sight entirely.
Also Directed by Yu Young-sik
In this anthology film centered around the theme of "Eros," five seperate stories are presented by five top Korean directors. The main characters from each segment are connected with each other in one way or another.
A group of Korean anarchists in 1920s China are determined to overthrow the military and government.