Blue Butterfly Effect(2017)

Patriot Game 2 - To Call a Deer a Horse(ko)

Wolsong: Vanishing Town(ko)

The Reservoir Game(ko)

An investigative reporter seeks to expose the whereabouts of a slush fund belonging to the former president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak.

Shadow Flowers(ko)

Ryun-hee Kim, a North Korean housewife, was forced to come to South Korea and became its citizen against her will. As her seven years of struggle to go back to her family in North Korea continues, the political absurdity hinders her journey back to her loved ones. The life of her family in the North goes on in emptiness, and she fears that she might become someone, like a shadow, who exists only in the fading memory of her family.​

Ryeohaeng(ko)

A group of women climbs a summer mountain situated in South Korea. They are refugees who have settled into South Korean society after fleeing from North Korea. For them, climbing the mountains has been an unavoidable journey for survival - a matter of life and death.

My Love, Don't Cross That River(ko)

There lives a couple known as "100-year-old lovebirds". They're like fairy tale characters: the husband is strong like a woodman, and the wife is full of charms like a princess. They dearly love each other, wear Korean traditional clothes together, and still fall asleep hand in hand. However, death, quietly and like a thief, sits between them. This film starts from that moment, and follows the last moments of 76 years of their marriage.

Eastern Memories(fi)

At the turn of the 19th and 20th century Finnish philologist G. J. Ramstedt travelled around Mongolia and Central-Asia. In this documentary Ramstedt’s memoirs are heard in the modern day setting, where tradition is replaced with hunger for money, and deserts give way to cities.

The VICE Guide to North Korea(en)

"Getting into North Korea was one of the hardest and weirdest processes VBS has ever dealt with. They finally said, “OK, OK, you can come. But only as tourists.” At the airport, the North Korean consulate brought us to a restaurant and these women came out and started singing North Korean nationalist songs. We were thinking, “Look, we were just on a plane for 20 hours. Can we just go to bed?” but this guy with our group who was from the LA Times told us, “Everyone in here besides us is secret police. If you don’t act excited then you’re not going to get your visa. So we got drunk and jumped up onstage and sang songs with the girls. The next day we got our visas. A lot of people we had gone with didn’t get theirs. That was our first hint at just what a freaky, freaky trip we were embarking on…" -VICE Founder Shane Smith

Diving Women of Jeju-do(ko)

Jeju-do is the largest of Korean islands and lies between Korea and Japan. There, for hundreds of years, women dive without breathing apparatus, to the ocean floor and collect shellfish, octopus, and urchins that they sell. The divers are in their sixties and seventies and their daughters do not want to inherit their work, lifestyle, and health problems that go with diving. As a filmmaker I was privileged to meet many of these women and dive with them. Their stories of hardship and pride confirmed my desire to record this unique and ancient tradition.

Tiger Spirit(en)

Korea is a divided nation. Filmmaker Min Sook Lee sets out on a revelatory, emotion-charged journey into Korea’s broken heart, exploring the rhetoric and realism of reunification through the extraordinary stories of ordinary people.

Project Cheonan Ship(ko)

Interpreting an event of ROKS Cheonan corvette, torpedoed and sunken by North Korea, this documentary rebuilds the event with a different insight. No one can tell if the investigation of Cheonan has reached compelling conclusion. But the film tells and reveals how unreasonable Korean society is.

Kim-Gun(ko)

KIM-GUN searches for the whereabouts of a young man whose identity has sparked a national controversy over the 1980 May 18 Gwangju Uprising. Starting with the vague memories of those who had crossed paths with him during that time, the film tracks down those who participated in the Uprising as “Citizen Soldiers.” It also traces KIM’s final steps, based on photographic clues found in the firearms he carried and the “Surveillance Truck No. 10” in which he rode. By identifying KIM-GUN, we believe that we can find valuable leads to resolving the ongoing controversy over May 18. Why did a nameless young man join the Uprising? Why did he take up arms? Where has he gone afterwards? It is the answers to these questions that the film seeks.

Two Doors(ko)

The documentary Two Doors traces the Yongsan Tragedy of 2009, which took the lives of five evictees and one police SWAT unit member. Left with no choice but to climb up a steel watchtower in an appeal to the right to live, the evictees were able to come down to the ground a mere 25 hours after they had started to build the watchtower, as cold corpses. And the surviving evictees became lawbreakers. The announcement of the Public Prosecutors’ Office that the cause of the tragedy lay in the illegal and violent demonstration by the evictees, who had climbed up the watchtower with fire bombs, clashed with voices of criticism that an excessive crackdown by government power had turned a crackdown operation into a tragedy.

Things That Do Us Part(ko)

Things That Do Us Part is a documentary that reframes the stories of three women fighters who dove into a tragic war in modern Korean history, using witness statements and reenactments.

The Women Outside(en)

They're called bar women, hostesses, or sex workers and "western princesses." They come from poor families, struggling to earn a decent wage, only to be forced into the world's oldest profession. They're the women who work in the camptowns that surround U.S. military bases in South Korea. In 40 years, over a million women have worked in Korea's military sex industry, but their existence has never been officially acknowledged by either government. In The Women Outside, a film by J.T. Orinne Takagi and Hye Jung Park, some of these women bravely speak out about their lives for the first time. The film raises provocative questions about military policy, economic survival, and the role of women in global geopolitics

Cruel State(ko)

In April 2014, the entire nation of South Korea watched on television live as The Sewol capsized off the coast of Jindo. The tragedy left life-long wounds in the hearts of people whose family and friends had been among the 304 passengers killed. The majority of the victims were high school students on a school trip. Their parents were not even given the luxury of grieving, as they had to camp out in front of the Parliament, City Hall and the Presidential House, asking for only one thing - to know the truth about why their children had been left to die. But after more than a year, that truth has yet to be brought to light. This film is a documentation of the year-long struggle and painful soul-searching of people destined to be labelled as 'bereaved families' for the rest of their lives, as they come face to face with the naked face of their cruel country.

First Person Plural(en)

In 1966, Deann Borshay Liem was adopted by an American family and sent from Korea to her new home in California. There, the memory of her birth family was nearly obliterated, until recurring dreams led her to investigate her own past, and she discovered that her Korean mother was very much alive. Bravely uniting her biological and adoptive families, Borshay Liem embarks on a heartfelt journey in this acclaimed film that first premiered on POV in 2000. First Person Plural is a poignant essay on family, loss and the reconciling of two identities.

President′s 7 Hours(ko)

The film traces PARK Geun-hye's life back to the 1970s, when the leader-follower relationship began between PARK, who became the first lady of the Yushin regime, and CHOI Taemin, the leader of a pseudo-religion. It then examines the Sewol ferry incident, CHOI Soonsil Gate, candlelight rallies, and finally the impeachment.

Haewon(ko)

According to a survey by the U.S. military government in 1946, 78% of the South Korean people wanted socialism and only 14% capitalism. By appointing the pro-Japanese collaborators and the rightists, Rhee Syngman, who had not received the people's support, massacred those groups and civilians that were political stumbling blocks. In dealing with the Jeju 4.3 uprising in 1947 and the Yeosun incident in 1948 and The Korean War having broken out, massive civilian massacre became regularized.

Geographies of Kinship(en)

In this powerful tale about the rise of Korea’s global adoption program, four adult adoptees return to their country of birth and reconnect with their roots, mapping the geographies of kinship that bind them to a homeland they never knew.