The 20th London Korean Film Festival (LKFF) returns from 5–18 November 2025, featuring Cinema Now, Women’s Voices, a Special Screening, and Dramas of Resistance: The 80th Anniversary of Liberation, a programme co-organised with the Korean Film Archive. You can find the official press release launching the festival here. Below you’ll find a summary of the screenings in the … [Read More]
Director: Kim Jee-woon
London Korean Film Festival Announces 2025 Programme
Here’s the official press release for this year’s London Korean Film Festival, released today. This year’s festival is the 20th organised by the KCCUK. You can find the detailed schedule here. London Korean Film Festival announces programme for special 20th anniversary edition Opening Gala (World Premiere) – Frosted Window by acclaimed director Kim Jong-kwan, followed … [Read More]
BFI Film Season: Echoes in Time — Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema
The BFI Southbank programme for late October and November 2024 begins with Echoes in Time: Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema, a major new season running from 28 October to 31 December. Programmed by Young Jin Eric Choi and Goran Topalovic, Echoes in Time will focus on two groundbreaking periods in the … [Read More]
Cobweb screens at BFI London Film Festival
‘Incredible scenes play out in my dreams,’ insists impassioned film director Kim Ki-yeol (manically played by Bong Joon-ho regular Song Kang-ho), resolute in his determination to remake the ending of his latest film. With his cast and crew persuaded to do a two-day re-shoot, delicious chaos ensues as strict censorship regulations, the personal affairs of … [Read More]
Strangers in a Strange Land: two modern classics at Prince Charles Cinema
In The Good, The Bad, The Weird (Kim Jee-woon, 2008) and The Yellow Sea (Na Hong-jin, 2010), outlaws wage war against each other against the backdrop of an alien and unforgiving landscape of chaos. This mayhem is mirrored in the films’ productions, which are notorious to this day for their gruelling shooting conditions, schedule overruns, … [Read More]
Illang: The Wolf Brigade (인랑, 2018) review: stunning spectacle, cardboard empathy in sci-fi actioner
While the action set pieces of Illang: The Wolf Brigade are without exception visually jaw-dropping and grippingly frenetic, it is actor Gang Dong-won’s frozen, slightly pained yet kind of blank expression regardless of what emotion is required to be conveyed that is by far Illang’s weakest link. [Read More]
London Korean Film Festival 2017: full programme details
Details of the programme for the 2017 London Korean Film Festival were announced earlier this evening at the fun-packed and blood-spattered final teaser screening (Jung Byung-gil’s The Villainess). The detailed schedule is right at the bottom of this page, and the below press release gives us plenty to mull over in terms of the individual … [Read More]
Kim Jee-woon’s Age of Shadows gets UK release
The official UK release date for Kim Jee-woon’s colonial era spy thriller is 24 March. The Age of Shadows, released in the UK by Soda Pictures, opened last year’s London East Asia Film Festival. At the time of writing no London screenings have been announced, but the movie will be screened in Sheffield, and earlier previews are … [Read More]
Korean films in LEAFF’s Competition, Official Selection and Stories of Women sections
The 2016 London East Asia Film Festival has a number of strands. We’ve already posted details of the movies screening in the Park Chan-wook retrospective and the Jeonju International Film Festival Focus. So here are the Korean movies featuring in the other strands, the broader East Asian cinema sections, listed in order of screening at … [Read More]
Kim Ji-woon is March’s featured director
For March, the programme of screenings is expanded: two at the KCCUK and one at SOAS. Tale of Two Sisters is a classic, and Foul King is a guilty pleasure. For me though, Takashi Miike’s remake of Quiet Family, the deliriously madcap Happiness of the Katakuris, is unusual in being an improvement on the original. … [Read More]
Kim Jee-woon interview: “perhaps I’m a workaholic”
Kim Jee-woon explains his continued return to short films as a space for experimentation, genre exploration, and constant creative work. He discusses making a romantic comedy short, the challenges of screening shorts in Korea, and contrasts between Korean and Hollywood production systems shaped by his experience on The Last Stand. [Read More]
K-film at the BFI London Film Fest: Doomsday Book is really not worth the effort
Doomsday Book, the first of six Korean films to screen at the 56th BFI London Film Festival is a set of three short films based loosely on a science fiction theme. The two outer segments, gentle comedies directed by Im Pil-seong (임필성), sandwich a semi-serious but nevertheless meagre filling by Kim Ji-woon entitled Heavenly Creature … [Read More]
Schwarzenegger to appear in Kim Ji-woon’s Hollywood debut
Arnold Schwarzenegger confirmed for Kim Ji-woon’s Hollywood film The Last Stand. Here’s hoping Kim does a better job for Arnie than he did for Choi Min-sik in I Saw the Devil. [Read More]
I Saw The Devil (악마를 보았다, 2010) review: a visceral descent into the emptiness of revenge
A visceral, brutal yet at times beautiful film, I Saw The Devil pits a sadistic serial killer against a grieving secret agent, and shows that no closure, appeasement or fulfillment is to be found in the act of revenge, with only emptiness and the unforeseen consequences of vengeful actions ultimately resulting from it. [Read More]
Choi Min-sik season: A Quiet Family screens at the KCC
After seeing how unoriginal Kim Ji-woon can be when presented with someone else’s script (did ANYONE think that I saw the Devil was worth two hours of your life?), it’s a relief to be reminded that when he writes his own stuff he’s on sparkling form. This Thursday sees the start of a Choi Min-sik … [Read More]
Kim Ji-woon interview: the utter emptiness of revenge
Kim Ji-woon discusses I Saw the Devil, the controversy over its extreme violence, his approach to revenge and human darkness, casting Lee Byung-hun and Choi Min-sik, and his upcoming Hollywood project. He also reflects on scripting, genre, and how psychological and emotional truths shape his films. [Read More]