MOSTLYFILM: London Korean Film Festival 2016

We do enjoy a good film festival round these parts, as you may have noticed. London, obviously: the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme kind of counts as one too: and then there are the festivals that burned themselves out, like Terracotta and Edinburgh. It might be considered surprising that the London Korean Film Festival has been running in the city where I live for a decade now, and I've never seen a single film from it. In my defence, it's always come a little too hard on the heels of the LFF for my liking: I'm still recovering from the thirty-odd films I saw in October, and you want me to watch more?

Still, when the MostlyFilm editor asked me one week before the start of the LKFF if I fancied writing a preview for it, and sent me the links to 31 online screeners, it struck me that maybe a few more films wouldn't hurt.

In the end, I watched nine all the way through, and gave up on a tenth part way once I realised it was a three-hour long director's cut and I wouldn't have time to finish it that day. The result went up on MostlyFilm yesterday under the title London Korean Film Festival 2016, to coincide with the opening gala screening. You've missed that by now, obviously, but there are still another fourteen days of Korean movies to be seen in London, plus a ten-day touring programme visiting Sheffield, Manchester, Nottingham, Glasgow and Belfast. Visit here for full details of all the films showing, but not until you've had a quick look at the trailer reel I've provided below as the Red Button Bonus Content for the MostlyFilm review.

There are ten films reviewed in my piece: I've not been able to source videos for two of them (The Widow and Episode 4: Because The Outside World Has Changed…), so as replacements for those you get the trailer for another film from the female director strand (Take Care Of My Cat) and the trailer for the festival itself. Here's the playlist:

1. The Truth Beneath (trailer)
2. The Phantom Detective (trailer)
3. If You Were Me (trailer - this is the portmanteau film that includes Soju And Ice Cream)
4. Take Care Of My Cat (trailer)
5. Inside Men (opening scene - be sure to have the subtitles turned on, it's a killer setup for a movie)
6. Good Windy Days (title song)
7. The Tayo Movie: Mission Ace (original Korean trailer, not the American dub being shown in the festival)
8. Breathing Underwater (trailer)
9. Keep Going (very very short trailer)
10. London Korean Film Festival 2016 (festival trailer)

Comments

[Suze]

If you like Korean films and Zombies (a somewhat niche genre I'll admit), then try TRAIN TO BUSAN. Just don't take public transport to see it.