This season of Bong Joon-ho’s movies contains all his feature films (excluding his latest, Mickey 17, which is currently on general release in cinemas) plus Incoherence, a 30-minute short film from his time at the Korean Academy of Film Arts in 1994. Parasite and Mother will be screened in both colour and black and white versions. Two of his close collaborators, production designer Lee Ha-jun and translator Darcy Paquet, will be coming over from Seoul to discuss working with director Bong on some of his most acclaimed films. Lee will go behind the scenes to share some of the production materials for Parasite, while Paquet will discuss the process of translating many of director Bong’s films into English.
Power and Paradox: Bong Joon-ho season at BFI Southbank
This retrospective of Bong Joon Ho, spanning an award-winning early short through to a series of internationally acclaimed features, charts the ascendancy of Korea’s most successful filmmaker, writes programmer Eunji Lee
Korean cinema can be divided into two eras: before and after the emergence of director Bong Joon Ho. The advent of the 21st century marked a new beginning for Korean film, of which he played a pivotal role. With films that spanned everyday life and the realms of alternative or futuristic worlds, he balanced critical acclaim with commercial heft. His themes explore power through paradox, where control meets chaos, and humour intertwines with horror, laying bare the intricacy of societal systems; with audiences better positioned to identify the structures of power that his characters appear oblivious to. The tension between visibility and blindness creates a striking irony – a hallmark of Bong’s work. This season includes all of Bong’s features, alongside an early short that reveals a brilliance fully formed, all of which have conjured a compelling and immensely entertaining cinematic universe.
Schedule
| Monday 31 March 2025, 8:30pm | Memories of Murder |
| Tuesday 1 April, 6:15pm | Barking Dogs Never Bite |
| Thursday 3 April, 8:30pm | Parasite |
| Saturday 5 April, 6:00pm | The Host |
| Tuesday 8 April, 8:30pm | Memories of Murder |
| Wednesday 9 April, 8:30pm | Mother |
| Friday 11 April, 6:05pm | Snowpiercer |
| Saturday 12 April, 2:50pm | Okja |
| Saturday 19 April, 8:30pm | Barking Dogs Never Bite + Incoherence (1994) |
| Sunday 20 April, 6:10pm | Memories of Murder |
| Tuesday 22 April, 8:30pm | Parasite |
| Thursday 24 April, 6:10pm | The Creative Collaborations of Bong Joon Ho |
| Thursday 24 April, 8:30pm | The Host + intro |
| Friday 25 April, 6:00pm | Okja + intro |
| Saturday 26 April, 2:10pm | Mother: Black & White Version |
| Saturday 26 April, 8:35pm | Snowpiercer |
| Tuesday 29 April, 6:05pm | Parasite: Black & White Version |