Korea, wall, pureum kim, mutants

The writer, director and director of South Korean photography Syeyoung Park may only be 28 years old, but he already has some experience of cinema and emerges as a gender author to make waves. At the 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, for example. Its new feature, The fin, World first in the filmmakers of the Presence Program Festival Program on Saturday August 9.

If you think Calmar game was dystopian, consult the synopsis of this film in a unified Korea imagined. “In a post-war and ecologically devastated Korea, the mutated parias called omegas are exploited as cheap workforce,” he said. “Sujin, a young government worker, is starting to doubt the ideology of the state as she continues Mia, an omega to hide.”

Omega are humans transferred with fins and fish -shaped feet, and their cries outside the water would be fatal. Oh yes, their fins are also full of toxins, and when they die, omegas releases the influence, the government recalls what citizens. The omegas, exploited as well as the workforce to clean the oceans, face a constant suppression and prosecution if they manage to cross the large wall.

“Located in a quasi-future Korea, The fin Explore the contagion of fear and the manufacture of myths, ”explains Park in a director’s note. Indeed, fear and propaganda are everywhere. “The large wall. Our pride. Our goalkeeper. Our unified Korea ”, goes a slogan presented in the film. And Omegas, exploited as the workforce to clean the oceans, confront a constant abolition and prosecution if they manage to cross the wall.

Yeji Yeon (Pachinko) Depicted Mia, an omega who lives disguised among humans and receives a visit from an omena escaped who asks him to respond to the final wish of his deceased father. Mia works in a strange store that exploits people for people for the sea and fishing. Pureum Kim, a well-known Korean singer, embodies Sujin, a newly recruited government employee who grew up with the strong anti-Doma feeling of his mother and is wary of Mia. Goh-woo, Youngdoo Jeong and Jowon Meng are also part of the distribution.

Original inspiration for The fin came when Park’s grandmother died of Covid, and the family could not go through the usual rites. “It made me think about what someone means to lose someone,” recalls the filmmaker of a first seed. “But then history has evolved from there.”

His life experience near the demilitarized area between North Korea and South Korea also influenced the film. “Seoul is expensive, and as a student, I had to get out of the city. But I’m not a rich family, and things are not easy for students, so I found myself more and more north, ”he explains. “And the border plays in your mind.”

The equivalent of the “border” of the film is, yes, the wall. The social divisions that the park also knows how to appear in the film, for example, in the form of some of the least lucky people in the streets and the fish store.

And as if to underline such points on the division of social classes, Park says that the fish store, in which key scenes from the film have been filmed, in an “neglected and abandoned” area used for shooting, was closed and demolished without much warning during the filming process. Picked the assembly of construction images centered on gentrification!

Park previously made a characteristic of more than 60 minutes, the film 2022 The fifth thoracic vertebraWho won three prizes at the Bucheon Film Festival, a best director Honor at the Seoul Independent Film Festival, and a special mention of the jury at the Fantasia Film Festival de Montréal. It is also a genre film with dark themes. “A creature born in an abandoned mattress travels across the country by adjusting the vertebrae of its victims, fighting to free themselves,” reads in a synopsis.

The fin is Park’s first complete feature, so to speak, and the process to finish it lasted for a while. “The publishing process took three years, much more time than what I expected,” shares Park. The prolonged modification period, as well as the reshuffles, meant that things in the real world have changed during work on the film, blurring the boundaries between facts and fiction. “The walls have started to climb and that the wars started, so the world has become more dystopian,” said Park.

I have to question the young filmmaker about his surely limited budget, and he shares that he amounted to less than 25,000 euros ($ 29,000) before photos of co -production and the rocking rushed and helped other costs. However, how is it done with a limited budget without his audience noticing?! “I work for 11 months, turning the clips and brand movies of other people,” he said THR. “And the money I put aside, I then use to turn my own job. I do my own cinematography and work with close collaborators who help me. ”

Many people presented in his films, for example, are in fact new actors and friends. But not all. “I was the director of photography of a short film where Pureum Kim was the main actress,” explains Park. “It was five years ago. She went on board the film, and we also collaborated on her clips. The fin. “And how youji Yeon, who may recognize you Pachinkofinish in a key role in The fin? She went to the same university as Park, and one of her crew members knew her from the film school. “She introduced us,” explains Park nonchalantly.

His way of directing is to allow people in front of the camera to act naturally as much as possible. “Because most of them are not trained actors, I like to capture scenes in a raw style”, rather than organizing too much, he explains. “It makes it more authentic.” Due to his limited budget, Park says he chooses locations and then tends to pull fairly quickly, also adding to this feeling of authenticity.

He also knows how to transform the budget and crew restrictions into a creative visual advantage with regard to lighting. “I often film, then improves light in post-production,” explains Park THR. For The finHis team worked to make the low light extra grainy, which gives it a particularly sinister quality.

During the finish The finPark did some shorts, like The masked monsterwho thrown to Locarno last year and obtained a special mention of the Shorts jury. You can imagine that the synopsis is, once again, quite dark. “Really hungry, a girl exchanges her brother for a bag of rice,” he said. “When her hunger is satisfied, she returns to her minds. But it’s too late.”

Park has drawn another feature last year which he published at the moment and promises frightening feelings of a different type. His title: Who stole my cross?

“It’s based on a real experience,” said the filmmaker THR. His father is a pastor and the community of the church of Park realized at one point that a man whom they considered as a friend was a thief of the cross, he explains. “We went to his house to face him on this subject, but he had disappeared,” he recalls. “We found that there were hundreds of stolen crosses in his house. So there were all these questions: who is this guy? And why did he stole so much cross? I wanted to explore this in the form of a film.”