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Korea Herald
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Heo Ga-young didn't expect to get on course —then she won at Cannes
From a no-budget short film to La Cinef's top prize, the director reflects on her creative journey and the uncertain road ahead When Heo Ga-young applied to the Korean Academy of Film Arts with a bare-bones seven-minute film about sweet and sour pork, she figured she'd blown it. The school was Korea's most prestigious film program, the kind of place where industry veterans compete for spots alongside wannabe auteurs hoping to follow alumni like Bong Joon-ho. Her portfolio consisted of two amateur actors arguing over the ubiquitous Korean-Chinese dish — specifically, whether to pour the sauce on top or dip each piece. Total budget: basically nothing. Film background: some homemade clips and scripts, but nothing that really counted. "Some interviewers asked if I was mocking the school. Another said I had serious nerve," she says over coffee in Seoul. It was, she later learned, the shortest and cheapest submission in KAFA history. Then Jung Sung-il spoke up. Korea's most respected film critic and instructor at KAFA — the one cinephiles quote chapter and verse — saw something different. "He told me he didn't have questions, just advice. He said I was a genius, that I needed to make films, that most people wouldn't love my work but the ones who did would be obsessed with it forever." She laughs at the memory. "I had no clue who he was. Just this old guy being weirdly nice." Two years later, Heo's graduation film "First Summer" won the top prize at the Cannes International Film Festival's La Cinef competition, a competitive showcase for film school students, making her the first Korean filmmaker to take the top honor. It was also the only Korean film at Cannes this year — a lonely victory for a Korean film industry that is increasingly anxious about its global standing. The path from that strange interview to Cannes began, as these things often do, with family. While an undergraduate student at Yonsei University, Heo was assigned to interview an elderly person for a class project. She chose her grandmother, a woman she'd lived with as a teenager but never really understood. "I thought she didn't love me," Heo says. "Korean grandmothers are supposed to be warm, cooking for their grandchildren. Mine was cold, kind of twisted. She never made me a single meal. Did face masks every night but wouldn't share even one with her granddaughter." The conversation changed everything. "First thing out of her mouth: 'I have a boyfriend but can't reach him, so I'm taking sleeping pills because I'm so worried.' In that moment, I saw her for the first time — not as my grandmother or my mother's mother, but as a woman. My whole concept of elderly people just flipped upside down." That revelation sent Heo prowling Busan's streets, notebook in hand. She struck up random conversations with elderly people on street corners, visited the city's "colatecques" -- dance clubs where seniors socialize over Coke instead of alcohol. The first few times, she got turned away for being too young. "Once they heard I was making a film about elderly people, everything changed," she said. "They told me personal stories, became extras in the film, lent me their clothes." The colatecques revealed their own logic, their own culture. Open during daylight hours, closing by six so grandmothers could get home to cook dinner. Coffee from vending machines, trot music on the speakers, and that particular intimacy of partner dancing. "An old man asked me to dance, and suddenly his face was right there in front of mine. That's when I understood what having a dance partner means at that age. It's not about romance. It's about feeling alive, being a social creature, that physical struggle against disappearing." Her first draft told the story from a granddaughter's perspective — a young woman trying to understand her eccentric grandmother. Everyone loved it: The actors loved it, the school loved it. Heo had doubts. "I realized I was objectifying her all over again, romanticizing old age through my twentysomething lens. The story began with my grandmother's actual life. The moment I made it fake, the film would fail." A month before production, she rewrote everything from the grandmother's perspective. "The staff lost their minds," she says. The final version follows Yeong-sun, played with fierce dignity by veteran actor Heo Jin, as she chooses between attending her granddaughter's wedding and her younger boyfriend's funeral (spoiler alert: She picks the funeral). What unfolds is a portrait of grief, desire and late-life self-discovery that refuses to look away from its subject's complexity. At Cannes, the jury — including German filmmaker Maren Ade, whose "Toni Erdmann" Heo had studied obsessively in school — raved about the film. "They kept saying they loved it, love with a capital L," Heo recalls. But the real validation came from audiences at the post-ceremony screening in Paris. "Elderly women thanked me for making them protagonists. People said they needed to call their grandmothers immediately. One person said, 'Thank you for telling a story that isn't fake.' As a filmmaker, you can't ask for more than that." The warmth of that reception couldn't mask the reality Heo returned to in Korea. The film industry she'd entered two years ago is struggling to find its post-pandemic footing. Box office numbers remain sluggish, screen monopolies by a few blockbusters has worsened, and government funding for the arts has been slashed. Young directors are entering an industry that claimed to want fresh voices while demanding increasingly formulaic products. "They tell us in school to develop our unique vision, our own cinematic language," Heo says. "Then you graduate and realize the market only wants copies of what worked last year. You watch your seniors compromise until their films could be directed by anyone." Which made Monday's meeting at the Presidential Office all the more surreal. President Lee Jae-myung had gathered Korea's recent international award winners — including Tony Award-winning musical writer Park Chun-hue, Prix de Lausanne ballet champion Park Youn-jae and world-renowned soprano Jo Sumi. Heo sat among them as Korean cinema's sole representative, there because her student film had salvaged some pride for an industry shut out of every major film festival this year. The president's first words to her landed with perfect irony: "I hope you'll succeed as a commercial filmmaker." Heo wanted to ask what he meant by commercial. Instead, with cameras rolling and officials watching, she talked about the crisis eating Korean cinema alive. How film schools train directors to develop unique voices, how the industry claims to want innovation, but how market realities force young filmmakers into predetermined molds. "We lose our cinematic language trying to fit into boxes labeled 'profitable,'" she said. She made her pitch: Adopt the French model where blockbuster profits fund diverse filmmaking through taxation and redistribution. "Audiences are smarter than we think. They recognize good stories. But those stories have to exist first. When you maintain a steady supply of diverse films, the culture survives. In France, people still see movies as art, still go on dates to the cinema, because that ecosystem exists." The cameras rolled, ministers nodded politely, and Heo stumbled through her prepared remarks, forgetting half of what she had planned to say. "I was so nervous," she says. "All those cameras, all that pressure to represent an entire industry in crisis. I always thought I thrived onstage — guess not." That pressure reflects something deeper about the way Heo approaches her work. Throughout the interview, she returns repeatedly to broader questions of purpose and ethics. It would be reductive to label this activism — filmmakers create, and it would be blasphemous to suggest otherwise. But it's hard to miss how deeply Heo's awareness of cinema's social dimensions shapes her work. When sustainable filmmaking in financial terms is mentioned, she immediately pivots to environmental concerns — the mountains of waste generated after each shoot. When discussing "First Summer," she frames it in terms of violence of representation and the filmmaker's accountability. "Film is inherently violent," she says. "You're in a dark room, experiencing a director's world one-sidedly for hours. People pay money, give their time. We owe them something meaningful in return. Having a platform means having power. I feel that weight constantly." That weight drives the two scripts she's currently developing — one about a middle-aged female bassist, another about a couple trafficking abortion pills. But drive alone doesn't secure anything. Despite the Cannes victory and fawning media coverage, despite the presidential photo op and industry acclaim, Heo knows her future remains as precarious as any young filmmaker's. "We all live with this low-grade panic," she says. "Winning at Cannes was an incredible honor, but it guarantees nothing about my next film getting made. I constantly hear about projects being cancelled. I see directors becoming replaceable parts in an assembly line. The fear is that I've finally found my voice, and I'll have to lose it just to survive." "First Summer" will get a limited theatrical release in Korea next month, part of ongoing negotiations between KAFA and distributors. Theater chain representatives declined to comment on the matter. It's an important progress and victory for a student film that might otherwise struggle to find an audience, but hardly a career guarantee for Heo. Asked if she is optimistic about cinema's future, particularly in an era of shrinking attention spans and binge-watching, Heo doesn't hesitate. "Honestly? I'm pretty pessimistic." She pauses, reconsidering. "But I think every artist secretly harbors hope. Why else would we do this? We believe our work might shift something in the world, even if slightly. Film is becoming niche culture — maybe that's inevitable. But we still have to try." She finishes her coffee and shrugs.
Korea Herald
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Heo Ga-young's 'First Summer' wins top honor at Cannes' La Cinef
KAFA graduate becomes first Korean filmmaker to win La Cinef's top prize Heo Ga-young's graduation short "First Summer" won first prize at La Cinef at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first Korean film to receive the top honor, festival organizers announced Thursday. The Korean Academy of Film Arts graduate beat 15 other student films selected from nearly 2,700 entries worldwide. Her 15-minute work pairs veteran actor Heo Jin with Jung In-ki in a story about an older woman charting new territory after years devoted to her family. Jury president Maren Ade presented the 15,000 euro ($17,000) first prize during Thursday's ceremony at Bunuel Theatre in Cannes. Beijing Film Academy's Qu Zhizheng took second for "12 Moments Before the Flag-Raising Ceremony," while Japan's Miki Tanaka and Estonia's Natalia Mirzoyan shared third. The winning films screen at Paris's Cinema du Pantheon on June 6. The film marks Korea's second selection this year alongside animator Jung Yu-mi's "Glasses" in Critics' Week. No Korean feature film made it into the festival's lineup this year. La Cinef, formerly Cinefondation, serves as the festival's dedicated platform for student films. It selects 15-20 short and medium-length films annually from film schools around the world. Korean entries have appeared regularly since 2001, with several securing runner-up and third-place positions. Most recently, Hwang Hye-in's thriller "Hole" won second prize in 2023. Yoon Dae-won's "Cicada" also took second place in 2021.
Korea Herald
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Huh Ga-young's 'First Summer' heads to Cannes
KAFA grad's short film joins lineup showcasing next-generation film talent "First Summer," director Huh Ga-young's graduation film from the Korean Academy of Film Arts, has been selected for the Cinefondation section at the upcoming 78th Cannes Film Festival, the Korean Film Council said Wednesday. The short film, which pairs veteran actor Heo Jin with Jung In-ki, follows an elderly woman who begins to chart a new path for herself after having dedicated her life solely to her family. In interviews with local media, Huh described the work as a tribute to her grandmother. "First Summer" marks the second Korean work invited to this year's festival, following animator Jung Yu-mi's "Glasses," which will compete in the Critics' Week short film competition. A Korean feature film has yet to be included in the festival's lineup. Cinefondation, now known as La Cinef, was founded in 1998 as a platform to spotlight emerging filmmaking talent from film schools worldwide. The competitive section selects 15-20 short and medium-length student films annually from over 1,000 submissions. Korean films have maintained a presence in this section since 2001, when Kim Young-nam's "I Can Fly To You But You…" became the first Korean entry. The country has produced several award winners ever since. Most recently, Hwang Hye-in's thriller "Hole" claimed second prize at the 76th festival in 2023. Yoon Dae-won's "Cicada," which follows a transgender sex worker during one transformative night, also claimed second prize in 2021. Several Cinefondation alumni have made their marks in Korean commercial cinema. Cho Sung-hee, whose 2009 entry "Don't Step Out of the House" earned third place, went on to direct the smash-hit romance "A Werewolf Boy" (2012) and Netflix's sci-fi blockbuster "Space Sweepers" (2019). Park Young-ju, invited in 2016, recently directed the feature "A Citizen of a Kind" (2024) starring Ra Mi-ran. The 78th Cannes Film Festival runs May 13 to May 24.
Korea Herald
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Why actor Park Jeong-min became a publisher and put audiobook first
Actor Park Jeong-min has introduced a new initiative as the head of his publishing company Muze, aiming to make literature more accessible to readers with visual impairments. The project, titled the 'Listening Novel Project,' launched with the release of Kim Keum-hee's new full-length novel "First Summer, Wanju" as an audiobook. Departing from the conventional practice of releasing print editions first, the audiobook version was completed and distributed ahead of the print release. On April 4, copies of the audiobook were donated to the National Library for the Disabled and other institutions serving visually impaired communities. It will be officially released on the audiobook platform Welaaa April 28, followed by the print edition, April 30. 'When my company's first book 'Saving Work' was published, my father had lost his eyesight,' he said explaining the motivation behind the project at a book talk held Thursday at the National Library of Korea in Seoul. 'It was disheartening that I couldn't show him the book. It led me to think about what kind of books he could still enjoy. That's how the idea of a 'listening novel' came about.' "First Summer, Wanju" follows Son Yeol-mae, a voice actor, who travels to the hometown of a once-close friend who had betrayed her. The audiobook was produced with actors participating gratis. They include Go Min-si, Yum Jung-ah, Choi Yang-rak, Kim Eui-sung, Park Joon-myeon and Ryu Hyun-kyung. Unlike standard audiobooks, the production was structured more like a radio drama, incorporating detailed sound effects and original music by singer-songwriters MRCH and Gureumy. Park added that the project is ongoing, with contracts already signed with additional authors. 'It felt like the characters I had written became clearer through their voices,' author Kim said. 'Usually, the characters spoke in 'my voice,' but this was the first time I realized how many distinct voices were in the story.' The Thursdy book talk was open to readers with visual impairments and their support aides. "In the case of movies, it's difficult to enjoy them without audio descriptions, so I've turned to books more often," said one attendee. 'This audiobook felt so special, (with the different actors and sound effects) it was like a movie to me, making visual impairments feel less like a barrier.' Park, known for his roles in "Dongju: The Portrait of a Poet," Netflix's "The 8 Show" and Coupang Play's "Newtopia," is no stranger to books. He has written a series of columns in a magazine, and published an essay collection titled "Useful Human" (2016). He also previously ran an independent bookstore before founding Muze and publishing its first book, "Saving Work," by journalist Park So-young in 2020. "If there are people who want to tell stories from overlooked places, I wanted to give them the chance to speak," Park said, explaining the reason for starting the publishing company.
Korea Herald
04-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Rising talents get spotlight at Korean Academy of Film Arts graduation film fest
38 works by academy graduates to be screened March 7-15 in Seoul and Busan The Korean Academy of Film Arts will host its annual Graduation Film Festival March 7-9 at Megabox Seongsu in Seoul, with an additional screening day on March 15 at the Korean Film Council's headquarters in Busan, organizers announced Tuesday. Under the slogan "Like a Movie," this year's festival will present 38 films from KAFA's latest graduates, offering audiences a first glimpse at Korea's emerging cinematic talents. The lineup includes 18 live-action short films, five short animations, seven feature-length animations, six feature-length live-action films and two demo productions from the KAFA Actors program. Notable works include "First Summer" (Korean title: "Cheotyeoreum") directed by Huh Ga-young, a live-action short film that pairs 1970s star Heo Jin with actor Jung In-ki, and the short animation "Fantasy Theater" (Korean title: "hwan-sang-geuk-jang") directed by Han Sol-mi, a tale about a historic single-screen cinema in Wonju awaiting demolition. The festival will also screen "Hana Meets Hana," directed by Kim Jung-byeon-ji, which won the best director award at the 20th San Diego International Kids' Film Festival, and "Tango at Dawn" directed by Kim Hyo-eun, a feature-length film previously invited to the 29th Busan International Film Festival's Korean Cinema Today section. Over its 41-year history, KAFA has established itself as Korea's premier film academy. Acclaimed directors who got their start in the program include Bong Joon-ho, Uhm Tae-hwa of "Vanishing Time: A Boy Who Returned" and "Concrete Utopia," and Jang Joon-hwan of "Save the Green Planet!," "Hwayi" and "1987." Screening times and tickets can be found on KAFA's official Instagram with options for advanced online booking and on-site purchases at the venue.
