What to see at the Lon­don Kore­an Film Fes­ti­val 2018

That sound you can hear is the South Kore­an film­mak­ing boom, still echo­ing around the globe. For lovers of cin­e­ma that’s polit­i­cal­ly engaged, for­mal­ly chal­leng­ing and still in its rel­a­tive infan­cy, the annu­al Lon­don Kore­an Film Fes­ti­val offers a boun­ty of excit­ing options. This year’s cel­e­bra­tion is the most expan­sive and diverse yet, fold­ing side­bars on shorts, ani­ma­tion and artist film into the main core of new and archive fea­ture work.

Fes­tiv­i­ties kick off with the Euro­pean pre­mière of Jeon Go-woon’s Micro­hab­i­tat, about a woman on the cusp of penury who decides to recon­nect with the mem­bers of her long-defunct band. Malene Choi’s The Return, look­ing at Kore­an dias­po­ra while fus­ing ele­ments of fact and fic­tion, clos­es out the fes­ti­val, but here are some of the great things hap­pen­ing in between…

Often when we think of South Kore­an cin­e­ma, images of byzan­tine revenge plots, crunch­ing vio­lence and chill­ing hor­rors spring to mind. A Slice of Every­day Life is a major strand at this year’s LKFF, and through its immac­u­late­ly curat­ed pro­gramme of real­ist trea­sures, it looks set to chal­lenge those pre­con­cep­tions. There’s a rare chance to catch Hong Sang-soo’s bril­liant sec­ond fea­ture, The Pow­er of Kang­won Province, from 1998, in which the always-inter­est­ing direc­tor forges the tem­plate for career obses­sions, notably the humil­i­a­tions that come with love and exces­sive alco­hol consumption.

Inno­cence and puri­ty abounds in So-Young Kim’s Tree­less Moun­tain, a ten­der, child’s eye view of the harsh Kore­an land­scape as seen from the van­tage of two knee-high tots. Con­verse­ly, vio­lence is the sole con­stant of the every­day life in Yang Ik-june’s pul­veris­ing Breath­less, in which the writer-direc­tor (who will be present at the fes­ti­val) plays a loan shark who per­pet­u­al­ly grav­i­tates towards con­fronta­tion. Oth­er treats include Kim Yang-hee’s The Poet and the Boy and Moon So-ri’s The Run­ning Actress, both receiv­ing their Euro­pean pre­mieres with­in the strand, while Park Jung­bum will be present with two films at the fes­ti­val: 2010’s The Jour­nals of Musan and 2015’s Alive.

Often, film fes­ti­vals oper­ate as a vital way to catch up with new works by estab­lished direc­tors who have not quite found their way onto the inter­na­tion­al dis­tri­b­u­tion cir­cuit. Park Ki-yong is one such tal­ent, who has over the span of two decades, amassed a small but per­fect­ly formed cin­e­mat­ic oeu­vre. The 2018 LKFF is offer­ing patrons a chance to see Park’s most recent work, Old Love, but to also catch up with two of his ear­ly fea­tures, 1997’s Motel Cac­tus and 2001’s Camel(s).

Those ear­ly films cov­er sub­jects of sex, bore­dom and dis­en­chant­ment, and his new one – made after a hia­tus run­ning var­i­ous film schools and mak­ing doc­u­men­taries – offers a wry auto-com­men­tary on the film­mak­er he once was. So our advice: make sure you see all three of these films for the full-pow­er Park experience.

Leap on this chance to catch the extreme­ly rare ear­ly works of direc­tor Lee Myung-se. Lee will like­ly be known to UK audi­ences for his 1999 action- thriller, Nowhere to Run, but he start­ed out as a mak­er of very sweet, light­ly sen­ti­men­tal and opu­lent­ly designed roman­tic comedies.

1990’s My Love, My Bride exam­ines the trou­bles encoun­tered by a pair of young new­ly­weds in accept­ing their new­found cou­ple­dom, while 1993’s First Love is some­thing of a lost clas­sic – a pro­to Amélie which taps into the dreams and desires of a roman­ti­cal­ly smit­ten female high school­er. Their Last Love Affair, from 1995, closed out this brief but fruit­ful ear­ly career chap­ter, as Lee picks apart the moral and emo­tion­al ques­tions that come from mar­i­tal infidelity

The Lon­don Kore­an Film Fes­ti­val runs from Novem­ber 1 – 25. For more infor­ma­tion and tick­ets vis­it kore​an​film​.co​.uk