Korean Cinema
Celebrating the vibrance and immediacy of South Korean cinema.
Bong Joon-ho's Oscar-winning Parasite (2020) may have been many people's first exposure to South Korean cinema, but the celebrated film in fact represented a culmination of two decades' development for a prodiguous generation of cinematic talent. Here we present a selection of modern Korean classics, including works from established directors like Park Chan-wook; but also films that were big homegrown box-office successes yet less widely seen outside Korea. All of them as deserving of wider appreciation as that achieved by Parasite.The collection is complementary to the survey of Korean cinema presented in BFI Southbank’s two-month season of Korean cinema in partnership with Korean Cultural Centre UK (KCCUK) and Korean Film Council. The selection of films here is intended to follow on directly from the New Korean Cinema (1996-2003) strand presented in our BFI Southbank season, to highlight the cinematic achievements of the past twenty years.
