Korean movie fans will be excited to see the line-up of the upcoming Sundance Film Festival, as a total of four local directors’ works are to be featured ― including the much anticipated “Stoker” by Park Chan-wook.

The festival, which kicks off on Jan. 17, includes Park’s film in its Premieres program, a showcase of world premieres of some of the most highly anticipated dramatic films of the coming year.

The thriller, which tells the story of a girl and her mother who are visited by a mysterious uncle after the girl’s father dies, is Park’s Hollywood debut. Nicole Kidman stars as the emotionally unstable mother, while Mia Wasikowska plays the young daughter in the film scripted by British-born American screenwriter Wentworth Miller.

Also included in the Premieres section along with Park’s “Stoker” is “Before Midnight,” which is the upcoming follow-up to the famous “Before Sunrise” (1995) and “Before Sunset” (2004). Like its predecessors, the film is directed by Richard Linklater, and features Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in the leading roles. In the film, Celine (Delpy) and Jesse (Hawke), almost two decades after their first encounter on a train bound for Vienna, reunite in Greece this time. They are now in their early 40s and it’s been nine years since they ran into each other in Paris.

In its World Cinema Dramatic Competition section, Korea’s Jeju-based director O Muel’s latest film “Jiseul” is competing against 13 others films.

The film is set during the 1948 Jeju Massacre, and tells the story of a group of some 120 villagers who hid from soldiers in a cave. The incident resulted in the death of some 30,000 islanders as the government sought to quell an uprising led by a small group of communist insurgents.

The film was premiered at this year’s Busan International Film Festival and won a total of four awards ― including the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema Award and the Citizen Critic Award.

Also included in this competition section is “What They Don’t Talk About When They Talk About Love,” an Indonesian film about teenagers, some physically disabled, pursuing their artistic endeavors. The section also includes “Shopping,” a New Zealand movie about a half-Samoan teenager living amid high racial tension in 1981 in the country, and “Houston,” a German film about a borderline alcoholic man with a shaky marriage. 

“You Are More than Beautiful” by local director Kim Tae-yong is running in the festival’s competition section for shorts. The director, best known for the Tang Wei and Hyun Bin romance “Late Autumn,” is invited for the 27-minute film about a man (Park Hee-soon) who arrives on Korea’s Jeju Island and pays a woman (Gong Hyo-jin) to act as his girlfriend in front of his ill father.

Also included in the short film program is local animated film “Bite the Tail” by Korean director Kim Song-e. The film is about a married woman who suffers from constant stomach pain. While doctors tell her there’s no cure for it, her husband says he’s going out to hunt a snake. A total of 65 shorts have been selected from 8,102 submissions for the section, according to the festival’s organizers.

Sundance Film Festival runs from Jan. 17 to 27 next year.

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)