The Korean Film Festival in Australia (KOFFIA) returns to cinemas in 2022 with a fabulous season of excellent new Korean films, spanning a range of exciting genres. Starting its Australian tour from Sydney this month the festival program features 13 of the finest films from Korea’s internationally recognised film industry.
KOFFIA is a cinematic experience for people of all tastes, ages and cultural backgrounds. As such, every film presented at the Festival screens with English subtitles. The program includes:
DRAMA
K-dramas are celebrated across the globe for their world-class storytelling. It’s no wonder the 2022 KOFFIA program features a slew of these masterful pieces of cinema.
The delightful and heart-breaking Broker features 2022 Cannes Film Festival Best Actor Song Kang-Ho and depicts a pair who illegally take an abandoned infant from a ‘baby box facility’ with the intention of finding the child a good home themselves.
In Front of Your Face features a former South Korean starlet, now living in anonymity in the US, which made its premiere in Cannes, capturing 24 hours in this fallen star’s life.
Decision To Leave sees a man fall from a mountain peak to his death. The detective who is carrying out the investigation meets the dead man’s wife Seo-rae. Seo-rae doesn’t show any signs of agitation at her husband’s death which results in her being a suspect of her husband’s death. As the detective observes her, he begins to develop feelings for her.
Escape from Mogadishu is set in the late 1980s at the height of the Cold War, with a diplomatic skirmish taking place in Somalia’s capital which ultimately leaves both the South and North Korean diplomats in their respective embassies, trapped.
Director Sin Suwon’s latest film Hommage is a tantalising mystery starring Lee Jeong-eun (Parasite, SFF 2019) as a filmmaker searching for missing footage from one of the first feature films directed by a South Korean woman.
In Our Prime follows an outcast in a prestigious private high school, who does not fit in due to a differing social background than his well-to-do classmates. One day, he meets Hak-sung (CHOI Min-sik, Oldboy), the school’s security guard who is actually a mathematical genius, who defected from North Korea and is now living with his past shut away. Ji-woo asks Hak-sung to teach him math, and although reluctant at first Hak-sung eventually agrees to.
CRIME
KOFFIA’s Opening Night film Special Delivery is Park Dae-min’s crime action film that sees a secret delivery clerk dragged into a gambling crime and a long pursuit from Seoul to Busan involving a crooked police officer and his son. Starring Park So-dam (Parasite) and Director Q&A to follow the screening.
The Policeman’s Lineage follows Min-jae (CHOI Woo-shik), whose family has been in the police force for generations, and has been ordered to investigate Kang-yoon (CHO Jin-woong) secretly, who is the ace team leader of the investigation team. Min-jae has the belief of, “if the police do something illegal even if it has occurred during the process of investigation, he is also a criminal.” But while Min-jae investigates Kang-yoon, he begins to resemble Kang-yoon who has the belief of, “the chase of crime should be justified even if it's illegal.”
Hot Blooded is a film set in Kuam, a shabby port town in the shadow of the stunning port city of Busan. Hee-su is a third-rate gangster who has been acting like a hotel manager under Don Son for 20 years. Seemingly out of nowhere, Yong-kang, who fled the country as a murder suspect, returns home and begins causing trouble all over town, which only adds pressure on Hee-su.
The Roundup sees ‘Beast Cop’ MA Seok-do (Don Lee, Train to Busan) head to a foreign country to extradite a suspect, but soon discovers additional murder cases and hears about a vicious killer who has been committing crimes against tourists for several years.
FANTASY
I-an (YOON Kye-sang) loses his memory and wakes up in a new body every 12 hours in Spiritwalker, each time forced to discover who he is anew. In his desperate search to find himself, he comes across a woman who claims to recognise him. As he bores deeper into the mystery, he runs into a secretive organisation that appears to be chasing him. Before it's too late, he must find a way back into his own body. Also includes a Q+A with director Yoon Jae-keun.
MYSTERY
Toxic follows an ER doctor who suddenly lost his wife to a toxic humidifier disinfectant that claimed a large number of lives from 1994 to 2011, as he goes up against the Goliath to reveal the truth!
ROMANTIC COMEDY
Perhaps Love follows a group of people and their experiences with love and romance, like Hyun (RYU Seung-ryong), a best-selling writer, who has found himself in a slump for a long time. In the meantime, he accidentally meets Yu-jin (MU Jin-sung), an aspiring young writer.
“We put our hearts and souls into selecting 13 Korean films of diverse genres especially after the Korean film industry was heavily impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic over the last couple of years. We feel highly confident whether you are a film buff or not, this year’s curation of 13 films will lead you to a kaleidoscopic cinematic journey encompassing the spectrum of human emotions” explained KOFFIA Programmer Francis Lee.
“We wish KOFFIA will continue to serve as a platform on which more and more Australians will discover and enjoy the Korean way of storytelling, cinematography, acting and many more that are resonating with the global audience.”
18 - 23 August | Event Cinema George Street, Sydney
