A cinematic tribute to Kim Ki-duk, the great South Korean director who died in 2020 at the age of only 59 due to complications from Covid19, with a selection of his films, will be one of the special events of the 19th edition of Florence Korea Film Fest, the most important Italian festival dedicated to the best of contemporary South Korean cinema, which will be held in Florence, in hybrid form, from 21 to 28 May, live at the La Compagnia cinema and online on the Più Compagnia platform in collaboration with Mymovies. it.
The festival intends to pay homage to Kim Ki-duk, a cult director for many generations, who has told with his films a cross-section of traditional and contemporary Korea, spiritual, intimate where the theme of violence inevitably intersects with that of love: one of the most original and intense cinematic voices of the new millennium. The festival will present a selection of films, little distributed in Italy and which best represented his cinematographic journey in a kind of journey. From his big screen debut with Crocodrile (1996), a film that anticipated many of the themes he then dealt with in Wild Animals and 1997's Birdcage Inn (two other films in the selection) to Real Fiction, just restored in 4K, just a little seen and never distributed in Italy. The homage presents two films from 2011: Bad Guy and Address Unknown, the latter opening film of the 58th Venice International Film Festival, which will open in its narration the strong thematic trend of the US military occupation in Korea of the South which will often return in his films as in The Coast Guard (another title of the selection). The tribute to the interview closes in the documentary by Antoine Coppola, Kim Ki-duk, convulsive cinéaste de la beauté of 2006.
Among the great novelties of the festival, the Korean New Wave section, which will include the best of South Korean cinema from 1990 to 2004, the years that led the Seoul industry to be a protagonist among the great giants of the cinema market. The selection will screen the best blockbusters in the history of South Korea; the films that have won international festival awards and those that have represented the nation at the Oscars.
As every year, the 2021 programme presents a rich selection of over 100 films. In addition to the homage to Kim Ki-Duk, there will be: a retrospective dedicated to a director or an actor / actress (whose name will be revealed over the next few months); the competitive sections Korean Horizons; Independent Korea (an overview of the most interesting works by emerging authors); K-Documentary (a selection of the best documentary works); Short, Short!, dedicated to short films with young promises of South Korean cinema. It is also confirmed the Virtual Reality Experience section in collaboration with Barunson Entertainment.
The jury will award the “Festival Critics Award” to the best film in the Orizzonti and Independent sections. For the Short section, a jury made up of young film critics and scholars will award the “Short Films Young Jury Award” to the best short film. After each screening, the audience in the hall will be asked to express their opinion on the film from the Independent Korea and Korean Horizons sections, in order to award the festival prize to the most voted.
The event, conceived and directed by Riccardo Gelli of the Taegukgi – Toscana Korea Association, is organized with the support of the Tuscany System Foundation, the Tuscany Region, the Metropolitan City of Florence, the Municipality of Florence, KOFIC – Korean Film Council with the main sponsors Conad and Unipol Sai.
More info will be available soon on The Official Website
