South Korea: Success at all Costs

With their long working hours, cultural obsession with productivity, and high-stakes schooling system, South Koreans live life in the fast lane. Everyone has the same aim: to be successful and to beat the competition. Thanks in part to this hard...

South Korea: Earth's Hidden Wilderness

Once a mountain kingdom of ancient palaces and emperors, Korea in the 21st century is largely known for its modern cities and decades of conflict. Tensions between North and South may be what defines it to outsiders but beyond the battle scars there is another side to Korea. In the south are large pockets of untouched wilderness where extraordinary animals flourish and Koreans continue to practice age-old traditions in tandem with the seasons and with nature. It is in these connections, rather than in division, that we see the true Korea.

나쁜 나라

In April 2014, the entire nation of South Korea watched on television live as The Sewol capsized off the coast of Jindo. The tragedy left life-long wounds in the hearts of people whose family and friends had been among the 304 passengers killed. The majority of the victims were high school students on a school trip. Their parents were not even given the luxury of grieving, as they had to camp out in front of the Parliament, City Hall and the Presidential House, asking for only one thing - to know the truth about why their children had been left to die. But after more than a year, that truth has yet to be brought to light. This film is a documentation of the year-long struggle and painful soul-searching of people destined to be labelled as 'bereaved families' for the rest of their lives, as they come face to face with the naked face of their cruel country.

5.18 힌츠페터 스토리

In May of 1980, the city is locked down and phone lines are dead because of protests and struggles in demand of democracy. Just when Gwangju was being ignored by the media, Jurgen Hinzpeter, a reporter from Germany, sneaks in despite the danger!

Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower

When the Chinese Communist Party backtracks on its promise of autonomy to Hong Kong, teenager Joshua Wong decides to save his city. Rallying thousands of kids to skip school and occupy the streets, Joshua becomes an unlikely leader in Hong Kong and one of China’s most notorious dissidents.

Jam Docu 강정

Gangjeong Village, located at the southernmost part of Jeju Island's Seogwipo City, is in the true sense a 'breathtaking land of water.' In this film, eight directors independently yet collaboratively orchestrate a clever and humorous "mission" at this place where the groundwork for building a naval military base is in progress.

백년전쟁 1부: 두 얼굴의 이승만

공동정범

In October 2015, the evicted residents who had imprisoned on a false charge of killing a policeman assembled in a place for the first time after the Yongsan Disaster six years ago. They had occupied a watchtower against unreasonable redevelopment policies and in protest against violent suppression used by riot police in 25 hours of their sit-in demonstration. Their colleagues had died from an unknown fire, and they became criminals. The delight of meeting again lasts only briefly. The ‘comrades’ rip out cruel words while blaming each other.

South Korea: Focused on Excellence

A documentary about the some athletes of South Korea and how can they inspire a new generation.

오월愛

This year is the 30th anniversary of the Gwangju Democratization Movement. Though the country commemorates the event as the official historical records, it does not include any 'real' accounts of the people who experienced it firsthand. The students who were part of the movement; the female vendors who made rice balls for the students; the female high school students cooked at the government building; now, past their middle age, they live as ordinary citizens in Gwangju city. How is the event remembered by these people?

황무지 5월의 고해

The movie is a compilation of the movie "Wilderness" in which a member of the airborne unit who killed a girl during the Gwangju Democratization Movement burned himself to death with remorse and "Mr. Kant's Presentation", the story of a man who wanders around as a result of torture after participating as a civilian army.

종로의 기적

A story about 4 gay men who try to lead a normal life in Korea, the conservative and harsh country for LGBT in Asia. In the middle of making a queer film Jun-moon, a director, loses his self-confidence due to social scrutiny regarding his sexual orientation. Byung-gwon, a gay rights activist, has been participating in movements to establish equal rights for homosexual laborers. Young-soo, a chef who moved from the countryside 15 years ago, lived a lonely life but he finds happiness after joining a gay choir. Yol, who works for a major company, dreams of the day him and his partner, can have a legal wedding with overcoming the prejudice against people living with HIV/AIDS.

부재의 기억

When the MV Sewol ferry sank off the coast of South Korea in 2014, over three hundred people lost their lives, most of them schoolchildren. Years later, the victims’ families and survivors are still demanding justice from national authorities.

더 플랜

Let's look back at the 18th presidential vote. The 13,500 ballot boxes were taken to 251 ballot count locations and were sorted by 1,300 automatic ballot openers. The chairman announced the sorted data and soon it was announced to the public. But something strange happened. The 251 ballot count locations found 'a number' that have the same pattern. Scientists, mathematicians, statistician and hackers from all over the country start looking into the secret of 'this number'. The result is tremendously shocking...

버블 패밀리

My parents were real estate developers and dealers in the 1980s. They achieved the ‘middle class dream’ thanks to the development boom. However, the Asian financial crisis swept everything away.

저수지 게임

An investigative reporter seeks to expose the whereabouts of a slush fund belonging to the former president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak.

삽질

The Grand Canal project was one of the key pledges of the former President Lee. He first said that he was carrying out a project to save the four rivers but it was a lie. He eventually proceeded the project which was a hotbed of all kinds of irregularities. After ten years, now the river is dying. Some people collaborated to the past regime, and some resisted it. On whom will we stand?

임신한 나무와 도깨비

The movie, which seemed likely to be a video study by a local researcher on comfort women in the military camp town, is becoming an increasingly fictional world, including visits by the dead, resulting in historical, fantastic and allegorical results.

두 개의 문

The documentary Two Doors traces the Yongsan Tragedy of 2009, which took the lives of five evictees and one police SWAT unit member. Left with no choice but to climb up a steel watchtower in an appeal to the right to live, the evictees were able to come down to the ground a mere 25 hours after they had started to build the watchtower, as cold corpses. And the surviving evictees became lawbreakers. The announcement of the Public Prosecutors’ Office that the cause of the tragedy lay in the illegal and violent demonstration by the evictees, who had climbed up the watchtower with fire bombs, clashed with voices of criticism that an excessive crackdown by government power had turned a crackdown operation into a tragedy.

그림자꽃

Ryun-hee Kim, a North Korean housewife, was forced to come to South Korea and became its citizen against her will. As her seven years of struggle to go back to her family in North Korea continues, the political absurdity hinders her journey back to her loved ones. The life of her family in the North goes on in emptiness, and she fears that she might become someone, like a shadow, who exists only in the fading memory of her family.​