About the Film
The 2014 MV Sewol disaster was one of the most impactful events in contemporary S. Korean history, not only for the hundreds of deaths that resulted from the sinking of the ferry, but also from the reactions towards the political leadership that followed and eventually led to Park Geun-hye's impeachment. Yi Seung-jun revisits the events during and after the accident in this Oscar-dominated documentary short
Synopsis
The film starts in a very revealing and shocking fashion, with recordings of the conversations between the various levels of Korean authority, which highlight their incompetence to grasp the situation, as much as their ridiculous efforts to show-off. Furthermore, SMS, emails, and videos from the students' mobiles provide a more thorough look at what was going on during the sinking, in a series of chilling sequences. The aftermath, through the testimonies of the parents of the victims, the divers who volunteered to save the passengers and eventually to discover the bodies, intensify this sense, while the tragic story of one of them is another clear indication of how significant the consequences of the tragedy were, to everyone involved, to say the least.
