South Korea’s female film­mak­ers are final­ly mak­ing their voic­es heard

This year Bong Joon-ho’s Par­a­site became the first Kore­an film to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. An impres­sive achieve­ment not only for Bong but for a coun­try that only began mak­ing waves at inter­na­tion­al film fes­ti­vals around 15 years ago, when the likes of Park Chan-wook’s Old­boy, Kim Ki-duk’s 3‑Iron and Lee Chang-dong’s Oasis start­ed scoop­ing up sec­ondary prizes.

Yet, even now, this same small group of male auteurs con­tin­ues to dom­i­nate Kore­an cin­e­ma abroad. Of the last 13 South Kore­an fea­tures to play at Cannes none were direct­ed by a woman. The South Kore­an gov­ern­ment has long sup­port­ed its film indus­try through sub­si­dies as part of the ongo­ing Kore­an Wave, which has brought much Kore­an cul­ture to the world. How­ev­er, even as Kore­an cin­e­ma becomes more pop­u­lar than ever and a new wave of female direc­tors reach suc­cess domes­ti­cal­ly, where are the female voic­es in the glob­al market?

At this year’s BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val that ques­tion was answered, as four of the five Kore­an films pro­grammed in the fes­ti­val were direct­ed by women. This includ­ed the eccen­tric Mag­gie by Yi Ok-seop, a film with a nar­rat­ing cat­fish, sex­u­al x‑rays and freak geo­log­i­cal events. One film that bril­liant­ly under­cut male fes­ti­val elit­ism was Heart by Jeong Ga-young. It plays like a Hong Sang-soo inflect­ed com­e­dy, right down to the director’s trade­mark of long sta­t­ic shots of con­ver­sa­tions filled with drink­ing. Heart is about a female direc­tor look­ing for love with a mar­ried man, a some­what tongue-in-cheek state­ment on the themes com­mon­ly found in this par­tic­u­lar brand of Kore­an fes­ti­val-cir­cuit comedy.

Direc­tor Jeong says she was, ​“try­ing to avoid those stereo­types that Kore­an movies or dra­mas have been deal­ing with,” also adding, ​“I would like a female char­ac­ter that makes rea­son­able choic­es.” As a film where the direc­tor plays her­self mak­ing the film, she has cer­tain­ly deliv­ered some­thing unique.

The stand­out Kore­an film at the LFF was House of Hum­ming­bird, a school­girl-cen­tred dra­ma described by first-time direc­tor Kim Bo-ra as, ​“two sto­ries: [South] Korea’s com­ing-of-age and her com­ing-of-age.” Kim rep­re­sents the future of South Kore­an cin­e­ma: reflex­ive and insight­ful about the past but also for­ward-think­ing and focused on the here and now. She calls House of Hum­ming­bird ​“a col­lec­tive sto­ry” which is also ​“very per­son­al”, and in the way it turns indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ence into a uni­ver­sal sto­ry it is rem­i­nis­cent of the late Edward Yang.

Kim’s face lights up at the men­tion of Yang’s name. ​“Yi Yi was my only ref­er­ence for the film; [in Yi Yi] by see­ing the one par­tic­u­lar fam­i­ly at a micro­cos­mic lev­el, we see Taipei, Tai­wan, and the his­to­ry, all his­to­ry. That’s what I want­ed to do with this film. By just watch­ing [lead char­ac­ter] Eun-hee, you see Kore­an soci­ety, now and the past.”

Is this the start of some­thing big for South Korea’s female film­mak­ers? Kim thinks so. ​“We now have this female film new wave – I’m very hap­py to be part of that. Last year was the first year that the Busan Film Fes­ti­val chose so many films by female direc­tors. I’m very hap­py with that fact, not because they chose female films, but because the films are good. I think this year was a his­toric year for Kore­an cin­e­ma because my film was released at the end of August in Korea and then The House of Us and Mag­gie. Ten years ago, if one female filmmaker’s film was released, that would be the only one. But this year we have so many.”

Kim’s praise of The House of Us has been echoed by many, includ­ing Bong Joon-ho, who has hailed direc­tor Yoon Ga-eun as a direc­tor to watch. The House of Us is anoth­er out­stand­ing female-led film of grace and beau­ty, focus­ing on chil­dren find­ing small joys in bro­ken homes. It deals with divorce, a top­ic which also fea­tures in House of Hum­ming­bird. Kim explains that, ​“still divorce is taboo in Korea,” which per­haps explains why it has tak­en two bold film­mak­ers to bring mar­i­tal ten­sion to the fore in Kore­an cin­e­ma. Both films are also told from the per­spec­tives of young girls. ​“I want­ed to make my main char­ac­ter, Eun-hee, a hero,” Kim explains. ​“She goes through a lot of things. When film talks about his­to­ry and soci­ety and all the polit­i­cal stuff, peo­ple nor­mal­ly assume that the main char­ac­ter would be male or older.”

Long-strug­gling Kore­an female direc­tors are mak­ing their voic­es heard in oth­er ways too. The #MeToo move­ment led to damn­ing accu­sa­tions against direc­tor Kim Ki-duk, which brought gen­der issues to the fore­front of the local film indus­try. That, along with more lib­er­al film sub­si­dies from both the Kore­an gov­ern­ment and the Asian Cin­e­ma Fund at the Busan Film Fes­ti­val, have helped launch many new projects. Yim Soon-rye, whose past work includes an anthol­o­gy film with Park Chan-wook, had a domes­tic hit last year with the charm­ing Lit­tle For­est. Well-known female actors like Moon So-ri and Ku Hye-sun have moved into directing.

Bong declared his Cannes vic­to­ry ​“an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to learn more about Kore­an cin­e­ma,” and that, ​“there’s a lot of Kore­an tal­ent that could win the Palme”. The female film­mak­ers men­tioned here are what he was refer­ring to, and if you want to dis­cov­er more of what Kore­an cin­e­ma has to offer, you need look no further.