About the film (catalogue PDF)
About Im Kwon-Taek (catalogue PDF)
"'Gilsoddeum' ranges wide to make palpable how the Korean War is the still-gaping scar of the divided nation and its sundered families. Against this backdrop, which becomes substance, Im's ability to create a new image frame within a single Cinemascope shot gains a new dimension. In the example of a separated pair of lovers who, after seeking each other for thirty-five years, find each other again in a bittersweet reunion but cannot bridge the deep, inner gap between them, the shattering and fracturing of Korea's whole society becomes comprehensible as a thousandfold, individually repeated tragedy. The war made the whole nation the puppets of the Great Powers, and the arbitrary border divided people's local homelands much more cruelly than did the division of Germany since 1945; and the characters themselves are no longer whole. At the ending, the woman even rejects her rediscovered, underprivileged son; and the couple that wanted to reunite parts wordlessly, with no farewell. The man demonstratively tosses the woman's address into a – public – wastebasket... 'Gilsoddeum' is the strong, unadorned expression of a whole nation's inner forlornness, in which even seemingly psychological dramas have solely sociopolitical roots." Bruno Jaeggi
Production: Hwa Chun Trading Co (Seoul)
Screenplay: Song Kil-han
Cinematographer: Jeong II-seong
Art director: Kim Yu-jun
Composer: Kim Jeong-kil
Cast: Kim Jee-mi, Shin Seong-il, Han So-ryong
Format/screen ratio: 35mm, 1:1.85, Color
Running time: 105 min., 24frames/sec.
Language: Korean
