The Irish director of horror suspense film “Oddity,” Damian McCarthy has informed his work with an appreciation for Korean cinema. “I think of Choi Min-sik when he just has explosive temper at the end of ‘Oldboy’ or anything Song Kang-ho has done, it just ... this guy's just incredible,” he said at the start of an interview with The Korea Herald, hours before attending the awards ceremony where his film was in the international feature competition at the

Culture Oct. 22, 2024

“I would argue that this movie is not a Western,” Francis Galluppi, director of “The Last Stop in Yuma County,” said about his first feature film just hours before it won the audience award and top competitive Best of Bucheon title at Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival on July 12. The film takes place deep in the desert of 1980s Arizona at a diner next to the only gas station in a hundred miles. More than one mysterious stranger makes an entrance, denim and cow

Culture Aug. 22, 2024

BUCHEON, Gyeonggi Province -- Under the banner “Stay Strange,” Korea’s largest genre film festival, the 28th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, or BIFAN, kicked off Thursday, running to July 14. This year the film fest has brought 253 films from 49 countries to the Gyeonggi Province city just west of Seoul. Never the festival to shy away from trends in cinema, this year’s edition has notably opened the door to generative artificial intelligence, including 15 A

Film July 9, 2024

Indian film star Rajshri Deshpande had a rough time getting to Korea for the world premiere of “Privacy” at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival earlier this summer. “It was chaos,” she said. Her flight from Delhi had been delayed six hours, meaning she would land at Incheon Airport just as she should be at the festival’s opening ceremony. The film’s director, Sudeep Kanwal, was doing everything he could. “I was holding ground,” he sai

Film Aug. 7, 2023

A blistering 80-minute comedy made for the digital age, in which there seems to be no greater goal than going viral, “I Haven’t Done Anything” comes to the big screen this week after premiering at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival on June 30. The film begins with a YouTube-style video documentary about former child actor Oh Tae-kyung, better known as “Little Oh Dae-su” for his role as the younger version of Choi Min-sik‘s character in “Ol

Film July 11, 2023

BUCHEON, Gyeonggi Province – Now in its 27th year, the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival has long held a special place in the hearts of film buffs for the unique experiences it provides – sometimes gruesome, sometimes strange, always different. This year’s festival opened June 29 with Ari Aster’s “Beau is Not Afraid,” and runs for 11 days, presenting 262 films from 51 countries – 109 of which are making their world or international premiere a

Film July 5, 2023

JEONJU, North Jeolla Province – "Almost Entirely a Slight Disaster" is a "film about unhappy people, but not in a dark way," Turkish director Umut Subasi told the audience at its Asian premiere at the Jeonju International Film Festival in North Jeolla Province on April 28. The festival had described it as a “depression comedy.” "Humor is a survival tool," Subasi explained. Set in Istanbul, "Almost Entirely a Slight Disaster" revolves arou

Culture May 9, 2023

JEONJU, North Jeolla Province -- For those who enjoy the cinematic experience without such stringent requirements as a discernible plot, for those who relish artful ambiguity and tightly framed shots awash in rising natural sounds, the ongoing film festival in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province, beckons once again as a reprieve in a moviegoing world defined by blockbusters and safe formulas. Jeonju International Film Festival opened its 24th iteration on Thursday and runs through May 6. The film fest

Film May 1, 2023

John Cho’s recently released “Troublemaker,” co-written with Sarah Suk, is a coming-of-age story that takes place on the single, infamous night of “Sa-I-Gu,” or April 29, 1992. As the world is changing around him on the first night of the Los Angeles riots that followed the acquittal of four police officers who had brutally beat Rodney King, a Black man, in an incident caught on video, Korean American boy Jordan’s own world -- his central identity -- is expe

Books April 11, 2022

While other metropolises around the world and similar cities in East Asia have staked out their places in the international literary scene, Seoul has left its potential largely untapped. So contends Sollee Bae, who organizes the “Fiction Writers in Seoul” workshop. With a small collection of short fiction spanning just over 100 pages, Bae seeks to explore Seoul’s potential from an expat’s perspective in “A City of Han.”  The anthology begins strongly w

Books April 27, 2020

BUCHEON, Gyeonggi Province -- When director Mirrah Foulkes finished her first feature film, “Judy and Punch,” just before it was due to premiere at Sundance Film Festival in January, she put together a small screening in Sydney for the cast, “just so they could make sure they liked it -- decide whether or not to go to Sundance.”After a pause and moment of relief, “They all went,” Foulkes said. The premise of the Australian flick from Vice Films -- a relat

Film Nov. 7, 2019

　BUSAN -- “The Cave” debuted at the Busan International Film Festival on Oct. 5, becoming the first feature film released to portray the awe-inspiring events that had taken place just some 15 months prior in Chiang Rai, Thailand. 　The world watched on and was ultimately uplifted by the story of a soccer team of a dozen teenage boys and their 25-year-old coach surviving in a flooded cave for 18 days, before all were rescued alive and well through a complicated scuba relay extraction.&

Film Oct. 31, 2019

The Italian Chamber of Commerce in Korea organized its first True Italian Taste event at Lotte Hotel in Seoul on Wednesday, seeking to better acquaint the Korean market with flavors of the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy.The lunchtime demonstration was hosted by the organization’s Secretary-General Jacopo Giuman and featured a masterclass with chef Roberto Carcangiu from Italy.“We want to (make) aware the people about what is real, authentic Italian,” Giuman said,

Diplomatic Circuit Oct. 21, 2019

Shotgun blasts rip through the tranquil scene of a coffeehouse to open “Daniel Isn’t Real,” a psychological horror film that recently debuted at the genre-focused Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival. The portrayal is horrific in its intensity and brevity, cutting away quickly and returning moments later with police tape up and haphazard sheets unable to contain the crimson carnage draining down the floor. From the other side of the tape, an 8-year-old Luke who has jus

Film July 7, 2019

It is undeniable that many things in life are determined by the circumstances of one’s birth -- nationality, genetics and socioeconomic class not least of all. Added to that list, it was the three-hour window in which I was born in June 1985 that determined I’d be focused on justice and live a life defined by wanderlust. Similarly, the time of my partner’s birth almost exactly a year later decided she would be a “straightforward and simple” person who speaks her mind with a strong will. Moto Saj

Culture Jan. 17, 2019