A few decades ago, in the early 2000s, korean cinema was on the lips of many restless moviegoers. like directors Park Chan-wook (‘Old man’), Bong Joon-ho (‘Memories of murder’, much later ‘Parasites’) anyone Kim Jee-woon (‘2 sisters’) shook the retinas with his visceral and creative genre films. Two years ago the world was stunned ‘Squid game’Some were quick to point out, quite reasonably, that almost everything good about this series came from that generation of exemplary filmmakers.
They are writers who are still in form but have had to make some room for bright heirs. Or literally apprentices: first job Jason Yu After completing his university education he Help Bong Joon-ho in ‘Okja’, a charming eco-dystopian tale about a girl and her super pig. This is how he learned everything he needed about cinema. “In Korea, the job of an assistant director is always temporary,” Yu explains to us in the gardens of Melià Sitges. “You don’t accompany the director throughout his career. While shooting a film, you observe his work from pre-production to post-production and even promotion. I followed Bong every step of the way. And although I wasn’t very conscious of learning anything at the time, when I started making my own films… I realized I was copying him on everything!“.
There’s no one sleeping here
That first movie ‘To sleep’ (Official Fantasy Competition), a surprise at Cannes Critics’ Week and recently a huge success at the Korean box office. At this crossroads of black comedy, horror and drama, a newlywed couple (Lee Sun-kyun from ‘Parasites’ and Jung Yu-mi from many Hong Sang-soo movies) sees that her balance is disturbed when her husband starts talking in his sleep and increasingly terrifying acts of sleepwalkingThis may cause her to be afraid for the baby she is expecting. The search for painful but positive medical treatment will not help much: There is something here that escapes logic.
At first, Yu only wanted to make a “fun and commercial” film, but eventually personal elements began to seep into the project. “When I wrote the script, I was about to marry my long-term girlfriend, who is now my wife. At that time I thought a lot about marriage: why do some work and others do not? Should a person get married? These questions seeped into the story, but I didn’t want to make another cynical film on the subject. act romantic. Married people are like best friends; They support each other, they truly love each other… Then I throw an external obstacle at them that is no one’s fault.“says a Yu who verges on ‘spoiler’.
During preparation, he let his instincts guide him, without seeking conscious references. But he realized its full impact by doing interviews at festivals: ‘Seed of the Devil’by Roman Polanski, at least obviously ‘Bug’A couple’s nightmare by William Friedkin is “again set in a confined setting and structured in three parts.”
Korea on our billboard
‘Sleep’ isn’t the only Korean movie raising expectations in Sitges: ‘Concrete utopia’A disaster drama written by Um Tae-hwa chosen to represent South Korea In the race for the best international film Oscar; ‘Smugglers’, epic ‘thriller’ from the highly experienced Ryoo Seung-wan or ‘Child’By the way, the new movie directed by Park Hoon-jung, the screenwriter of the movie ‘I Met the Devil’, is the masterpiece of Kim Jee-woon, whose metacinema work can be seen. ‘Spider web’.
According to this Melek SalaThe return of Korean cinema to the forefront in Sitges partly responds to the change in sales and distribution policies: “This cinematography had almost become a monopoly of the platforms, making it difficult to coordinate screening dates with those of the festivals,” the festival’s director explains to us. “That’s changed a bit, and our faith in the independent distributor who buys the film and advocates for it for each territory has returned. This makes it easier to negotiate certain titles for festivals. Most of the films we own have an independent national distributor scheduled”. This situation ‘Sleep’ will be released soon Spain through adventureThe distributor in Barcelona did it right by producing a small Korean film called ‘Parasites’.