The Sydney Film Festival, which kicked off on Wednesday, June 8, will showcase five Korean films. The film festival has a special program called "Korea on the Verge: Social Faultlines in Korean Cinema."
The five Korean films were directed by notable indie film makers and will start screening on June 15. The program is supported by the Australian Agency and the Australia-Korea Foundation of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The films are: Alice in Earnestland by director Ahh Gooc-jin, Non Fiction Diary directed by Jung Yoon-suk, Love and... directed by Zhang Lu, A Fish by Park Hong-min, and Stateless Thing by Kim Kyung-mook.
Sydney Film Festival's guest programmer and curator Tony Rayns claims that the five films were picked for their diverse themes that tackle issues of social injustice, political scandal, traditions, and sexual deviances.
In a statement, Rayns said, "Korean cinema remains in many ways the liveliest in East Asia, but the program has gone a little off-mainstream. These edgy, combative films by fearless indie filmmakers don't paper over the cracks in Korean society, but expand them into social fault lines."
Alice in Earnestland, prior to being picked at the Sydney Film Festival, won the Best Korean feature prize at the 2016 Jeonju International Film Festival. The film is a political satire that tackles the life of a woman who is deep into debt and her struggles to take care of her husband.
Non Fiction Diary is presented in documentary style and delves into issues about freedom and social control during 1990's Korea. The film also takes viewers back to some of the events that marked the 90's like the infamous Jijon gang killings, and the collapse of the Sungoo Bridge in 1994 and Sampoong mall in 1995.
Love and... discusses themes of love and perception. A Fish is about a man looking for his wife who left and became a shaman. Stateless Things follows the lives of a North Korean defector along with his friend, who is a Chinese migrant, as they deal with sexual deviants in society.
