
“Project Y” Poster
Director: Lee Hwan
Cast: Han So-Hee, Jun Jong-Seo, Kim Shin-Rok, Kim Sung-Cheol, Kim Sung-cheol
Running Time: 110 min.
By Paul Bramhall
It’s always interesting to watch a director who’s primarily worked in the independent scene have the opportunity to helm a mainstream production. The likes of Jo Sung-hee would go from the lo-fi post-apocalyptic road movie End of Animal to helming Werewolf Boy, Phantom Detective, and Space Sweepers. Yeon Sang-ho went from helming gritty animated dramas like The King of Pigs and The Window to become the busiest director working today, responsible for the likes of Train to Busan and Jung_E. Actor Lee Hwan would voice the lead character in Sang-ho’s The Window, who in 2018 would transition into directing and screenwriting himself with the realist youth drama Park Hwa-young, following it up with the similarly themed Young Adult Matters in 2021 (in which he’d also act in front of the camera).
Both productions are centred around disenfranchised youth living on the margins of society, with the lives of runaway teens portrayed as a cycle of brutal bullying, being taken advantage of, and hopeless futures. In short, if anyone was to state a claim that Korean indies tend to be relentlessly gloomy and nihilistic affairs, then Hwan’s pair of directorial outings are not the one’s you’d go to in order to change their mind. So to see him turn his attention to heist Continue reading →
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