Korean Film Festival

Overview

While Hollywood and Bollywood are the most obvious cinema producers worldwide, there are several other nations pumping out quality motion pictures, worth stuffing your face with popcorn in front of. The output of South Korea is slowly inching onto the scene. Both North and South have relatively robust industries, though the former tends to portray communist or revolutionary themes. As part of the inaugural Korean Festival, Academy Cinemas will host five free days of South Korean cinema.

The programme will kick off on Tuesday 18 October with Hwayi: A Monster Boy, the anticipated second feature film by director Jang Joon-hwan. It follows a boy who was kidnapped as an infant and raised in isolation by five notorious criminals to become the perfect assassin. Every evening thereafter will feature a different film.

Battlefield Heroes is a war-comedy notorious for prompting director Lee Joon-ik to hang up his hat on the film business. The film is set in 668 and chronicles the war between the southern Korean state of Shilla against the larger northern Korean state of Goguryeo.

2012 heist blockbuster The Thieves is South Korea's fifth highest grossing film ever. Directed by Choi Dong-hoon, the splashy action is mixed with double-dealings and multiple betrayals as a gang of South Korean thieves team up with a Hong Kong crew to steal a diamond necklace from a heavily guarded casino safe in Macau.

South Korean rom-com Very Ordinary Couple follows a recently separated workmates who must deal with the prospect of continually seeing each other on a daily basis. It is based on the love life of writer/director Roh Deok.

The week's final offering is perhaps the most impressive. Due to a lack of technology, animated film Green Days: Dinosaur and I was hand-drawn in pencil, with 14 animators using 100,000-plus sheets. The end product took over 11 years to create and premiered at the 15th Busan International Film Festival in 2010.