Now in its fifth year, the London Korean Film Festival has become well-respected on the British film festival circuit. Between the 15th and 23rd November, four films from the past year were shown at the Arts Picturehouse, accompanied by complementary talks and Q&A sessions. With its impressive variety of films, the Festival offered a brief but tantalising glimpse into the growing Korean movie industry.

Opening the Festival was Im Sang-soo’s high-budget drama thriller The Housemaid, followed by a Q&A session with the director. This film is a remake of Kim Ki-young’s celebrated 1960 film of the same name, but with notable differences: in the original, the housemaid essentially sets out to destroy the household, while in the 2010 version the housemaid is relatively innocent (described even as “childlike”) and seduced by her employer. When she falls pregnant and refuses an abortion, the man’s wife and mother-in-law take matters into their own hands, with tragic consequences.

In the Q&A session, Sang-soo explained the reasoning behind the changes. Firstly, he set the film in an extremely rich household to highlight modern Korea’s wealth disparity, hoping to depict what he saw as the immorality of many of Korea’s rich families. When asked whether the plot of the film might not exaggerate this, he replied that he saw it as accurate, which left many among the audience unconvinced: the actions of this family are vicious in the extreme. Despite this potentially reductive social agenda, the film was very well-made, with excellent performances and exquisite cinematography throughout.

Yi Sang-woo’s A Little Pond is based on the highly contentious subject of the 1950 massacre of 300 civilians by American soldiers at No Gun Ri. A low-budget film, it strives to inform people about the atrocity, and to provoke consideration of its implication in terms of both war conduct and the way we look at history and responsibility. The film is generally well-constructed and performed, though the inclusion of two CGI whales flying through the sky was, admittedly, perplexing. While it may have been intended as a metaphor for the intrusion of big fish into a little pond, in truth it was simply distracting.

The screening was followed by an enlightening Q&A with Choe Sang-hun, who in 2000 won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting based on his article on the massacre. He proved knowledgeable and eloquent, his responses well complemented by the University’s own Dr Shin and Dr Morris. The following day Choe gave an illuminating talk about No Gun Ri, further explaining the event and its implications.

The festival also included Park Chan-ok’s Paju and Jang Hun’s Secret Reunion, adding a formally innovative thriller and a buddy action movie which examines North-South relations onto the LKFF’s programme. The range of genres, styles and budgets showcased was particularly notable: Paju, for instance, was helmed by one of Korea’s few successful female directors, and proved an excellent choice in showcasing this typically underrepresented section of the industry. Overall this festival was a success, attracting large audiences which consisted of students, lecturers and people from outside of the University, and I sincerely hope it makes a return to Cambridge again next year.