This November, London Korean Film Festival (LKFF) returns to cinema screens in the capital. Now in its sixteenth year, LKFF is dedicated to showcasing the rich diversity of cinema flowing out of the ‘Asian Tiger’. Taking place between 4-19th November, get ready to discover the best of the year’s blockbusters, independent films, animation, documentaries, shorts and much more. There will also be a special focus on the work of Youn Yuh-jung following her much-deserved triumph at the Academy Awards.
Some of the highlights include:
Aloners
A solitary woman re-evaluates her isolated existence after her neighbour dies alone in his apartment, in Hong Sung-eun’s subtle debut feature.
Climbing
Se-hyeon, a professional climber who recently recovered from a car accident, discovers that she’s pregnant just before the World Championships. She struggles to break free from the pressures of motherhood. Meanwhile, she receives texts from herself who’s had a completely different life after the accident. Most importantly, she wants to keep her baby.
LIFECRIME
During a high school music exam to assess the singing abilities of students, Songju shows off his rapping skills. Juyeon looks happy, watching Songju rap. He loves hip-hop as much as Songju does although these two come from completely different backgrounds. Songju is a troubled student living in a multi-house home in a less developed area while Juyeon is an exemplary student living in a fancy apartment in a rich village. Despite differences in grade, personality, and background, they decide to form a hip-hop duo called LIMECRIME.
Snowball
A trio of 18-year-old girls are inseparable: Kang-yi, who always waits to see her friends’ reactions before acting herself; Ah-ram, who’ll pick up anything she finds on the street, and So-young, whose strong exterior hides an anxious heart. Always talking of escape to ‘somewhere else, somewhere unknown’, the trio runs away from home, creating a micro-universe built upon their friendship.
Sewing Sisters
In the late 1960s and 1970s, many young women flocked from the countryside to Seoul seeking work in the burgeoning garment industry and at the sewing factories of Pyeonghwa Market. They worked and lived in squalor and were brutally exploited; many suffered from starvation and were unable to access education. They became politicised and started to organise, struggling for the improvement of their lives by forming women’s networks of solidarity, setting up activist labour clubs, as well as literacy and learning classes.
Escape from Mogadishu
Dramatically constructed based on a true story: as civil war rages in Mogadishu, rival North and South Korean diplomats are left trapped. With no aid from either government, their only shot at survival may require uniting with bitter adversaries to escape.
To buy tickets and discover the full programme, visit the London Korean Film Festival website.
