Our friends at the Korean Film Festival in Australia (KOFFIA) are back with a massive program for 2022!
The 13th edition of KOFFIA appropriately features 13 films playing in Sydney (18 – 23 August), Melbourne (1 – 5 September), Canberra (1 – 3 September), Brisbane (8 – 11 September).
Here’s our picks of the films you simply can’t miss!
Special Delivery
The KOFFIA opening night film is a slick South Korean action film confirms the star power of Park So-Dam — as if there was any doubt in our minds. She plays driver skilled at delivering anything to anyone at any given time, backed by a cool attitude behind the wheel. When a former baseball player gets in too deep with gangsters, he plans to use the service to get the hell out of dodge. Yet when the bad guys catch up with him before Eun-Ha arrives, she winds up with his son Seo-won ( Parasite co-star Jung Hyeon-jun) in the backseat of her car. With both the crooks and the corrupt cops after them, it’s an adrenalin-fuelled race towards an indeterminate finish line. Read our full review.
Escape from Mogadishu
One of the biggest South Korean releases of the last year is a top-notch action thriller set against not-too-distant history. In January 1991, amidst rising rebellion and the ultimate collapse of Somali President Barre’s government, the South and North Korean embassies find themselves working together to flee the country before the violence escalates further. The aftermath of this event, and broader Somali Civil War, has famously been depicted by Ridley Scott in Black Hawk Down (2001). Although playing out on a more focused scale, and with a drastically smaller budget, Ryoo skilfully manoeuvres the audience to a bittersweet ending via a breathless series of spectacularly staged action sequences. Read our full review.
Broker
Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda is back. Following his French-language debut with The Truth, Kore-eda transplants his operations to South Korea. In this movie, a group of people, brought together by a baby box — a small space, where parents can leave behind their babies anonymously — set off on a journey that will lead to destinations they never expected. The announced cast so far includes Song Kang-Ho, Gang Dong-Won, Bae Doo-Na and Lee Joo-Young.
In Front of Your Face
It’s almost the law that a Hong Sang-soo film appears at any film festival, and doubly so at KOFFIA. This one follows a middle-aged former actress living in the United States who returns home to South Korea to reconnect with people from her past and atone for her various transgressions. Sounds like the perfect playground for
Decision to Leave
Speaking of heavy-hitting directors, no less a figure than Park Chan-wook arrives at KOFFIA this year with his first film since 2016’s The Handmaiden. Following a man falling from a mountain peak to his death, detective Hae-joon(Park Hae-il) comes to meet the dead man’s wife Seo-rae (Tang Wei). Not showing any signs of being a grieving widow, the police consider her a suspect.
The full program and tickets are available on the KOFFIA website.
