Take-5: 28th BIFF ’23
No, you might not be able to find these at the local cineplex or on Netflix just yet, but Korean film buffs would be wise to keep these five films on their radar.
The 28th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) is done and dusted, and despite a trying year (join the club) on several fronts and a smaller programme (200-ish films versus the usual 300-ish) there were plenty of hidden gems in the line-up: Yossep Anggi Noen’s 24 Hours with Gaspar from Indonesia, a dystopian sci-fi heist flick with literary aspirations; Ajji director Devashish Makhija juggled social and environmental conflict with a cat-and-mouse chase in Joram from India; Stefano Sollima’s neo-Italinoir crime thriller Adagio was a muscular, nihilistic shot at the heart of contemporary Italy; and Lance Larson took on the quickly emerging legacy of immigration policy in American supernatural border thriller Deadland.
Naturally a major focus every year is on Korean indies in BIFF’s Korean Cinema Today – Vision section. The section may be short on superstars but one of these films may star the next Song Kang-ho or be directed by the next Park Chan-wook. The 2023 selection of world premieres covered a lot of ground – housing fraud, LGBTQ+ rights, the failure of late-stage capitalism, the surveillance state and maternal pressures, as a few. If it were up to us, we’d be firing up the streamer of wherever you get your Korean content, or else be ready to jump when HKIFF rolls around next March.
Concerning My Daughter
| Director: Lee Mi-rang | Starring: Oh Min-ae, Heo Jin
Free of narrative clutter and emotional hyperbole, Concerning My Daughter | 딸에 대하여 is a mature and measured examination of generational divergence and LGBTQ+ rights. A caregiver to an elderly woman suffering dementia and her lesbian daughter clash over family, perception and morality when the daughter’s fight against her unfair dismissal as a university lecturer forces her to move home. The woman naturally baffles at the lack of compassion her own mother shows her, despite having heaps of it – and tolerance – for her client.
the Berefts
| Directors: Jeong Beom, Hur Jang | Starring: Lim Hoo-seong, Lee Do-jin, Lee Su-jeong
Here’s one Hongkongers can get behind. With housing prices so out of reach, a man uses his mentally challenged daughter as a pawn in an apartment lottery scheme. There’s more to the story than just that, as a broker and a single dad in need of a wife come into it, but The Berefts | 한 채 is a dour and borderline fatalistic spin on the Seoul housing crisis that demonstrates just how desperate some are to be property owners, or simply to live better than hand to mouth, and how easily they can be exploited.
delivery
| Director: Jang Min-joon
| Starring: Kim Young-min, Kwon So-hyun, Kang Tae-u, Kwon So-hyun
Not all women want to be mothers. Not all women that think they want to actually do when it happens. Some will bend the law to have a child, some are indifferent. Starting off as a kinda sorta dark comedy and morphing into something much more serious, Jang’s Delivery | 딜리버리 follows two couples in a transactional relationship for a baby that goes very, very wrong, and lightly skewers the ridiculous expectations placed on women to be mothers, no matter the cost and no matter their station.
Work to Do
| Director: Park Hong-jun | Starring: Jang Sung-bum, Seo Suk-kyu
When a company decides to downsize and destroy a lot of lives, the CEO and upper management are never the ones that have to do the dirty work. In Park’s Work to Do | 해야 할 일 two heavy industries office workers are tasked with selling the idea of early retirement to the olds and ruthlessly cutting the rest from the payroll to save both face and money. The toll it takes on them provides the emotional momentum in Park’s sharply realised, surprisingly gripping drama about redundancy that’s all too familiar these days.
The Guest
| Director: Yeon Je-gwang | Starring: Lee Ju-seung, Oh Hye-won, Jeong Soo-kyo, Han Min
Do not for one second think The Guest | 301호 모텔 살인사건 isn’t problematic AF. Yeon shows off a legitimate flair for exploitation in this lean, stylish horror joint, about a psycho who follows a woman to a remote motel and fucks everyone’s shit up. He also takes a few swings at the surveillance state we all live in and our seeming willingness to participate. But there’s an agency problem with the final girl that almost crushes the film. Still, there’s enough cleverness to recommend it with caution and to watch for Yeon’s follow-up.