London Korean Film Festival 2021: Explore The Programme

After a mostly digital edition in 2020, the London Korean Film Festival (LKFF) is pleased to be returning to cinema screens across the UK’s capital for its 16th year, running from 4 – 19 November 2021. With the biggest programme dedicated to Korean cinema outside of the country itself, we present a rich and diverse line-up showcasing the year’s biggest box-office hits, independent cinema, women’s voices, animation, documentary, award winning shorts, plus a Special Focus celebrating the career of iconic actor and 2021 Academy Award winner Youn Yuh-jung

Special Focus: Youn Yuh-jung

The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences added the categories of best supporting actors, male and female, to the Oscar awards in 1937. One of the several thousand gold-plated statuettes presented since the event began was awarded to the much-loved Korean actor Youn Yuh-jung at the last Oscar ceremony in April 2021. It was in recognition of her powerful and deeply humorous suppo...

Cinema Now

As its very name suggests, the remit of the Cinema Now strand is to focus on contemporary Korean films – but given that one of the key guiding principles for the programming (besides excellence) is eclecticism, it can be hard to generalise about films which have, after all, been selected in part for their differences and contrasts. For example, there is little common ground between Seo Yu...

Indie Talent

To cast one’s eyes over the Korean film industry these days is a bit like surveying wreckage after a storm. It will surely take some time before the mainstream industry is back to normal, but how did Korean independent cinema weather the pandemic? At first glance, one might conclude that it held up better than expected. Major local festivals such as Busan and Jeonju have continued to prem...

Documentary

In an ongoing collaboration with the Essay Film Festival, the documentary strand of the LKFF has sought, among other things, to shine a light on the rich history and current practice of social and activist documentary in Korea. Following this interest across several years, we have organised sessions dealing with the emergence of independent non-fiction film after the 1980s and filmmakers and fi...

Women’s Voices

The Seoul International Women’s Film Festival is introducing to audiences at the LKFF two contemporary films by women: Director Lee Woo-jung’s Snowball and Co-directors Park Sohyun, Kangyu Garam, Soram and Lee Somyi’s #AfterMeToo. From their materials and subject matter, from the perspective of style, and also through those women who worked on their production—reflected from all angles across t...

Animation

Artist Video – Plantarians (2017 – 2020)

6th November - 11th December

LUX

Plantarians (2017-2020) is a rumination on entangled relationships between humans and plants in urban areas. Divided into episodes, each follows individuals who cultivate, eat and accompany plants in celebration and grief. These everyday activities become strangely unfamiliar through unhurried attention to the moments of survival and resilience of plants between the cracks, on the peripheries o...

Mise-en-scène 1 미쟝센 단편영화제 1

Fri 12 Nov, 6:00pm

KCCUK

The Mise-en-scène Short Film Festival was born in 2002 to present, under the motto ‘Beyond the barrier of genres’, short films that brazenly bend the boundaries of genre through imagination. As the slogan ‘I LOVE SHORT!’ suggests, our boundless affection for short film has continued across the past twenty years. It’s true that in the past there were less opportunities for short films to meet th...

Mise-en-scène 2 미쟝센 단편영화제 2

Fri 12 Nov, 8:00pm

KCCUK

The Mise-en-scène Short Film Festival was born in 2002 to present, under the motto ‘Beyond the barrier of genres’, short films that brazenly bend the boundaries of genre through imagination. As the slogan ‘I LOVE SHORT!’ suggests, our boundless affection for short film has continued across the past twenty years. It’s true that in the past there were less opportunities for short films to meet th...