Films worth catching at this year's Jeonju film fest

Korea Herald

01-05-2025

From meditation on grief to immigrant narratives, three standouts worth seeking
The 26th Jeonju International Film Festival, South Korea's premier showcase for independent and art-house cinema, kicked off Wednesday, bringing 224 films from 57 countries to the cozy North Jeolla Province city through May 9.
This year's lineup features 80 world premieres amid a spectrum of narrative innovations and cultural perspectives. For those making the pilgrimage to Jeonju — the historic city known as much for its culinary heritage as its cultural significance — here are three standout films that exemplify the ethos of thoughtful, penetrating cinema.
Tickets can be purchased through JIFF's official website (English interface available). But move quickly — seats fill up quickly, especially during the festival's opening days.
"Hard Truths" (2024)
Mike Leigh, the unflinching chronicler of British working-class life, returns with a work of remarkable emotional precision. In what may be her finest performance since her Oscar-nominated turn in Leigh's "Secrets & Lies" (1996), Marianne Jean-Baptiste embodies Pansy, a woman whose corrosive rage has calcified around unprocessed grief.
The film opens with Pansy jolting awake with a gasp — a fitting introduction to a character perpetually at war with the world. Her husband Curtley (David Webber) and adult son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) move through their immaculately kept home like hesitant guests, while her more ebullient sister Chantelle (Michele Austin) attempts to penetrate Pansy's formidable defenses.
Leigh's patient, observational style allows spaces for revelation without forcing epiphanies. The restrained visual composition — Pansy's immaculate living spaces contrasted with Chantelle's warmly cluttered home — speaks volumes about emotional states without overstatement. What might have been merely an unpleasant character study in lesser hands becomes a profound meditation on the nature of suffering through Leigh's unfailing empathy and Jean-Baptiste's tour-de-force performance.
"Hard Truths" screens at Megabox Jeonju Gaeksa on May 2 at 10:00, May 5 at 21:30, and May 8 at 21:00.
"Winter in Sokcho" (2024)
In Japanese-French filmmaker Koya Kamura's feature debut, a seaside Korean border town in winter becomes both setting and metaphor for a story of cultural dislocation and unfulfilled yearning.
Adapted from Elisa Shua Dusapin's award-winning novel, the film follows Soo-Ha (Bella Kim in her screen debut), a young woman of mixed Korean-French heritage who works at a guesthouse in off-season Sokcho. When enigmatic French artist Yan Kerrand (Roschdy Zem) arrives seeking inspiration, their tentative interactions disturb Soo-Ha's carefully maintained composure.
Kamura constructs a delicate visual framework where landscapes mirror inner isolation. The cold, gray winter light of Sokcho, a profound meditation on the nature of suffering situated within viewing distance of North Korea, creates a liminal space where identities become as porous as borders. For Soo-Ha, whose father disappeared before she was born, Kerrand's arrival prompts an uncomfortable reckoning with her fragmented sense of self.
The film insists on subdued expression, almost to a fault — the relationship between these two figures unfolds less through dramatic confrontations than through silences, glances and the physical spaces surrounding them. In so doing, it sidesteps the predictable conventions of cross-cultural romance, offering instead a layered examination of alienation, creativity and the fundamental human longing to be truly seen by another.
"Winter in Sokcho" plays at CGV Jeonjugosa on May 2 at 21:30, May 3 at 21:00, and May 7 at 13:30.
"Mongrels" (2024)
Korean-Canadian filmmaker Jerome Yoo's dreamlike feature debut presents an immigrant family's displacement as both geographical and subliminal reality. Set in rural British Columbia during the 1990s, the film follows widowed father Sonny Lee (Kim Jae-Hyun), who relocates with his teenage son Hajoon (Nam Da-Nu) and young daughter Hana (Jin Sein) after being recruited to cull feral dogs that threaten local livestock.
Yoo structures the narrative in three distinct chapters, each focusing on a different family member's experience of grief and dislocation. This fragmented approach mirrors the disorientation of the immigrant experience itself — the characters process death and uprooting differently, creating psychological fissures even as they share the same house.
Yoo's visual sensibility proves remarkably assured for a debut feature. The film's surrealist approach reveals itself through stark imagery where boundaries between humans and animals merge, with recurring canine figures that function both as ominous portents and as metaphors for displaced identity. The performances, particularly Kim's portrayal of a father whose stoic focus on survival masks his inability to process loss, anchor the film's more expressionistic elements.
"Mongrels" screens at CGV Jeonjugosa on May 2 at 17:30, May 3 at 17:00, and May 7 at 17:00.
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