To the Starry Island

Like Park's earlier films, this provides an intimate close-up vision of a handful of characters, then pulls back to expose the political framework in which they are forced to exist. Unlike the other films, this takes place in a rural peasant community, and involves the supernatural as well as lengthy flashbacks to the Korean War of the 1950s. It's about the ramifications of that war on a lonely off-shore island - how a traditional people were swept up by events they barely understood, and how the bitterness of the experience still persists. A fascinating movie, with a bold, shocking climax.