Park Chan-wook's ‘No Other Choice' heads to Venice competition
Director Park Chan-wook's upcoming feature "No Other Choice" has been selected for the main competition at the 82nd Venice Film Festival, festival organizers announced Tuesday evening during a livestream unveiling the official lineup.
An adaptation of Donald Westlake's 1996 novel "The Ax," "No Other Choice" follows a laid-off middle-aged man who begins eliminating rival job candidates to secure employment and support his family. Lee Byung-hun stars alongside Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min, Yeom Hye-ran, Cha Seung-won and Yoo Yeon-seok.
The film marks the first Korean entry to compete for the Golden Lion since Kim Ki-duk's "Pieta" won the top prize in 2012. It is produced by CJ ENM and is set for domestic release in September.
Park last appeared in the Venice competition with "Sympathy for Lady Vengeance" in 2005. The director had reportedly spent 17 years developing the screenplay for "No Other Choice" before wrapping production in January.
Also in this year's competition is Yorgos Lanthimos's "Bugonia," an English-language remake of Jang Joon-hwan's 2003 cult classic, "Save the Green Planet." The genre hybrid stars Emma Stone and is co-produced by CJ ENM.
The 2025 Venice Film Festival runs Aug. 27-Sept. 6. Other titles in the competition include Kathryn Bigelow's "A House of Dynamite," Noah Baumbach's "Jay Kelly" starring George Clooney, and Guillermo del Toro's "Frankenstein" with Oscar Isaac.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Korea Herald
6 hours ago
- Korea Herald
Liquid Sound strips traditional street performance to its core
Performance collective reimagines pungmul through contemporary movement In pungmul, a traditional Korean form of folk music and dance, the performer leading the troupe wears a hat called sangmo topped with a long paper streamer known as piji that can stretch nearly 180 centimeters. As the drumming builds and the rhythms swell, the streamer whirls in perfect arcs and waves, never tangling, serving as a kinetic emblem of pungmul's identity. But what happens when you take away that visible identity, wondered Lee In-bo, director of the performance collective Liquid Sound. What remains in the body? And how can it expand from there? To find an answer, Liquid Sound deconstructs elements of pungmul and rebuilds them through the language of contemporary dance in 'OffOn: Yeonhee Project 2,' presented Friday and Saturday at Seoul's Sejong Center for the Performing Arts as part of its summer festival, Sync Next. Yeonhee, also spelled yeonhui (literally "play" or "performance" in Korean), is a broad term for traditional performing arts such as pungmul, mask dance, shamanistic rituals, puppet theater, traditional circus and folk music, and dance often rooted in folk rituals and community celebrations. 'From the very beginning, we asked our performers, 'What if we took away your instruments, your costumes — everything you're most confident in. Could you still exist onstage, purely as movement?'' Lee said in an interview with The Korea Herald last week. He called their creative process the 'OffOn' approach: taking something 'off' from traditional performance and attaching it 'on' to something new, in search of what Lee calls the DNA of traditional performance. It is the group's second contemporary dance project following 'Long: Yeonhee Project 1,' which they showcased last year at the Aurillac International Street Theatre Festival in France. In this genre-crossing Yeonhee Project series, traditional pungmul artists and dancers deconstruct movements that once flowed instinctively, studying them bit by bit, without the familiar music, rhythms, costumes or instruments. 'It's challenging even for seasoned performers,' said choreographer Shim Ju-young. 'They have to search for the movement itself — down to the core of their bodies. But it's also fascinating: you realize that spinning the sangmo requires precise, rhythmic head movements executed in distinctly different ways.' The show draws on various elements of pungmul and folk performance. One segment focuses on seoljanggu, traditionally a solo janggu drum showcase, reinterpreting its rhythmic footwork through hand gestures. Another segment references piroji, a moment in folk performance when female dancers take the stage, but here, male dancers join them, layering the rhythm with new textures. Shim, who trained in both Korean and contemporary dance, said she was fascinated by the possibilities. 'Even just visually, there's so much to play with. Each traditional element holds endless creative potential once you break it apart.' Founded in 2015, Liquid Sound aims to explore traditional Korean arts with diverse genres, from melding avant-garde gugak with electronic music, to contemporary dance, installation art and Western classical traditions. The name Liquid Sound reflects the group's sensory ambition of merging tactile fluidity with the auditory experience of music. 'It's about how we meet the audience,' Lee said. 'Traditional performers used to approach audiences in very direct, interactive ways. We're asking how to do that now — whether by adopting new methods or, sometimes, returning to older, simpler ones.' Next year, the company plans to continue its experimental exploration of traditional performance with the third edition of the Yeonhee Project. The two envision a future performance in which yeonhee artists and dancers blend so seamlessly that they create an entirely new genre. 'Rather than a technical blending of traditional and modern elements, I hope for a day when the fusion is so natural that you can't tell them apart," Shim said. Liquid Sound will take its work to several major festivals later this year, including the Busan Street Art Festival in September, the Performing Arts Market in Seoul in October, and an outdoor performance in Myeongdong hosted by the National Theater Company of Korea.
Korea Herald
10 hours ago
- Korea Herald
Why 'My Daughter is a Zombie' could be summer's pleasant surprise
A feel-good zombie comedy juggles horror, heart and humor with dexterity Korean cinema showed up fashionably late to the zombie party. But when it finally arrived with 2016's "Train to Busan," it more than proved it could hold its own. Now we're dealing with an even quirkier subspecies: The so-called zom-com, a hybrid genre as awkwardly constructed as its shambling subjects. From cult favorites like "Shaun of the Dead" to "Warm Bodies" and "Zombieland," this mash-up of horror and comedy has staked out real cinematic territory — one that turns blood-soaked chaos into unexpected belly laughs. Korea's earliest foray into this space might be 2019's "Zombie for Sale," which spun the undead into a get-rich-quick scheme gone predictably sideways. Enter "My Daughter is a Zombie," based on the popular webtoon of the same name. It takes the zom-com formula one step further by throwing earnest family melodrama into an already volatile mix. The story centers on Jung-hwan (Jo Jung-seok), a zookeeper and devoted single father raising his teenage daughter Soo-ah (Choi Yu-ri) through the familiar turbulence of adolescence. She's got the classic puberty playbook on display — rolling her eyes at her dad, brushing off his well-meaning questions, and delivering dry comebacks with teenaged flair. Their occasional moments of connection come through a shared love of dance. Jung-hwan, once an aspiring performer, now bonds with his daughter by helping her rehearse K-pop routines for her school talent show — including, rather quaintly, BoA's 2002 hit 'Number One.' But the everyday bickering comes to a halt when the zombie apocalypse strikes. The two watch in disbelief as their neighbors begin devouring each other in the street — mistaking the carnage at first for passionate lovemaking. The reality hits when a zombified neighbor crashes through their apartment window, and emergency broadcasts confirm their worst fears. Jung-hwan grabs Soo-ah and makes a run for his mother's home in the countryside, but the escape takes a devastating turn when Soo-ah is bitten during their frantic getaway. Despite its sunny title and cartoonish promotional materials, "My Daughter is a Zombie" doesn't shy away from legitimate horror tropes. Soo-ah's transformation sequence is surprisingly intense — bulging veins, clouded pupils, basically the full undead makeover. After a chaotic slapstick scuffle in the car that ends with Jung-hwan knocking his daughter unconscious, he straps her in and speeds toward his hometown, dodging military helicopters and roadblocks along the way. Once they arrive at grandmother Bam-soon's (Lee Jung-eun) house, Jung-hwan tries to keep the truth under wraps. But when Bam-soon discovers her granddaughter's condition, she's more irritated than alarmed. Wielding a wooden back scratcher like a weapon and armed with a sharp tongue, she instantly asserts dominance. The zombified Soo-ah, cowed by her grandmother's presence, behaves like a scolded puppy. Still, the question lingers: What now? After agonizing over whether to put his daughter down, Jung-hwan starts noticing glimmers of humanity in her behavior. Most strikingly, Soo-ah responds to familiar K-pop songs — reflexively moving through bits of choreography. Encouraged by a dubious YouTube clip suggesting that memory triggers can reverse zombie symptoms, Jung-hwan launches a desperate, increasingly bonkers rehabilitation mission: Retraining his daughter like one of the animals at his zoo. He's soon joined by childhood friend Dong-bae (Yoon Kyung-ho), a well-meaning but somewhat hapless pharmacist who offers comic relief and steady support. Things grow more complicated when Jung-hwan crosses paths with his childhood crush Yeon-hwa (Cho Yeo-jeong), now a middle school teacher. Yeon-hwa, still traumatized by her own zombie-related past, is now a militant anti-undead crusader determined to stamp out any infected survivors. As suspicions grow and the authorities close in, Jung-hwan is forced to go to greater lengths to shield Soo-ah — while confronting long-buried family rifts along the way. At its core, "My Daughter is a Zombie" traffics primarily in anodyne feel-good vibes, following a predictable emotional arc that trades logic for crowd-pleasing sentiment. It isn't chasing profound insights into humanity — and to its credit, it doesn't pretend otherwise. Its shortcomings are fairly easy to spot: The film occasionally loses momentum in meandering slice-of-life interludes that feel more like a webcomic vignette than a feature film. And for a film billing itself as a comedy, the humor can be hit-or-miss — the slapstick is plentiful, but not always sharp. Still, it would be a mistake to dismiss the film outright. Some movies manage to transform their clunkiness into charm, and "My Daughter is a Zombie" comes close to hitting that sweet spot. The key lies in its bold tonal shifts — gripping suspense undercut by slapstick gags, gut-punch drama interrupted by biting one-liners — which sound ridiculous on paper but click in practice. In an early escape sequence, Jung-hwan and Soo-ah avoid detection by mimicking zombie movements through dance — a stunt so over-the-top it becomes unexpectedly delightful. Elsewhere, a tense debate over whether to mercy-kill Soo-ah is derailed by a cultural in-joke about MBTI personality types. These sharp left turns, rather than feeling disjointed, become part of the film's distinct comic rhythm. And when the film drops the comedy to lean into sincerity — especially in its audacious finale — it does so with just enough conviction to land the emotional payoff. Much of this tonal balancing act works because of the cast. Jo Jung-seok, a reliable box office draw ("Pilot" drew 4.7 million viewers; "Exit" pulled in 9.4 million), is in his element here. As the awkward but fiercely loving father, he moves fluidly between goofball gags and gut-punch emotion, grounding the film even in its wildest moments. Lee Jung-eun is equally convincing as Bam-soon, delivering a mix of crusty wit and tough love that's both hilarious and oddly touching — much of it reportedly improvised. And 16-year-old Choi Yu-ri gives a breakthrough performance, managing to project both feral intensity and lingering innocence from beneath layers of prosthetic makeup. Her zombie Soo-ah is part monster, part misbehaving pet — and somehow, still heartbreakingly human. Will "My Daughter is a Zombie" defy expectations and become one of the summer's surprise hits? While it's far from a genre reinvention, it's hard not to root for it. At a time when high-budget blockbusters are tanking one after another, a modest film with genuine laughs and heartfelt moments might be exactly what audiences need. "My Daughter is a Zombie" hits theaters July 30.
Korea Herald
10 hours ago
- Korea Herald
Actor Park Bo-gum new face of Korea tourism
Following BTS, Lee Jung-jae and NewJeans, Park joins Korea's tourism efforts as honorary ambassador Actor Park Bo-gum has been appointed as the honorary ambassador for 2025 Korea Tourism, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced Thursday. A teaser video for the upcoming global promotional campaign was unveiled on the ministry's official YouTube channel 'Imagine Your Korea,' revealing Park as the new face of Korean tourism. The ministry and the Korea Tourism Organization have consistently tapped top-tier Hallyu stars to front their annual campaigns — BTS in 2022, Lee Jung-jae in 2023 and NewJeans in 2024. Park, widely loved for his nuanced acting, most recently in the Netflix hit 'When Life Gives You Tangerines,' will now lead efforts to promote Korea abroad over the next year. As global travelers increasingly seek personalized, emotionally resonant journeys rather than conventional sightseeing, this year's campaign encourages visitors to take charge in their own Korean travel stories. In the teaser clip, Park extends an invitation, asking, 'Will you be the main character of this story?' The message kicks off the 'Never Ending Korea' campaign, aimed at showcasing the country's charms and immersive travel experiences. The ministry and the tourism authority will officially appoint Park as the ambassador on Tuesday and unveil two campaign films along with a behind-the-scenes clip. The ads -- produced in the style of a short film and music video -- feature both Park's real-life persona and an alter ego. Adding to his involvement, Park also recorded the campaign's official theme song, 'On My Way,' composed and written by KZLAB, a team led by renowned K-pop producer Kenzie of SM Entertainment. The song will be released Thursday on major streaming platforms, including Spotify and Melon. In collaboration with Netflix, the ministry has also produced tourism-themed videos inspired by global Korean hits 'Squid Game' and 'All of Us Are Dead.' The 'Squid Game' version, titled 'Escape to Korea — Better Run,' has drawn more than 8.4 million views since its release on July 3. The 'All of Us Are Dead' campaign video, 'Escape to Korea — Better Together,' is slated for release on Aug. 7. According to Netflix, 72 percent of Korean content viewers expressed interest in visiting Korea, nearly double the 37 percent among non-viewers. 'More than 85 percent of this year's eight campaign videos were filmed outside Seoul, emphasizing hidden gems and lesser-known destinations in a bid to boost regional tourism,' a ministry official said in a statement. As part of efforts to support regional tourism, the campaign also includes theme ads spotlighting the Gyeongsang and Jeolla provinces, which suffered recent setbacks due to natural disasters and transportation incidents. The Gyeongsang video, 'Where Energy Never Sleeps,' focuses on Gyeongju, the host city for the upcoming APEC summit, while the Jeolla provinces' 'Where Beauty Moves Hearts' highlights the region's artistic allure through music and dance. The campaign videos will be screened on landmark billboards in 16 major cities including New York's Times Square, Tokyo, Beijing and Bangkok through November. Additional promotions will run across YouTube and Netflix, targeting over 20 key global tourism markets.
