Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos is investing a lot of money on Korean content.
It’s not just “Squid Game” either. Netflix viewership is high on an assortment of Korean film and television. In fact, Sarandos says that 60% of subscribers have watched at least one Korean title.
South Korea has been a country consistently on the edge. The threat of nuclear warfare, with its unpredictable neighbour of the North, always looming. You can feel that tension in the movies they make — which depict extreme emotional states with a sense of heightened realism.
The newly-minted South Korean New Wave actually takes some inspiration from American genre cinema, however, it is also unafraid to subvert and reinvent tired old Western formula. It is the most important cinematic movement to emerge in the international scene since the Romanian New Wave started blossoming almost twenty years ago.
In 2021, Trevor Treharne, the editor of KoreanScreen, asked if I could participate in a massive poll of international film critics. The aim was simple, to put together the 100 Greatest Korean Films Ever.
I was asked to send five South Korean films, unranked, which I considered to be the greatest ever. There was no requirement to rank them, each of the five films I list got a single vote.
Close to 158 critics participated, here were the results:
1) Burning
2) Parasite
3) Memories of Murder
4) Oldboy
5) The Handmaiden
6) Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring
7) The Housemaid
8) Poetry
9) Peppermint Candy
10) Aimless Bullet
11) Mother
12) The Wailing
13) Train to Busan
14) Oasis
15) Right Now, Wrong Then
16) A Tale of Two Sisters
17) Joint Security Area
18) The Host
19) Snowpiercer
20) Seopyeonje
The Korean New Wave, (which has also been nicknamed “Hallyuwood” with “Hallyu” roughly translating as “flow from Korea”), started in the Aughts and was heralded by a Best Picture Oscar win in 2020 for Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite.
These are startlingly original, and daring films, and picking just five was a nearly impossible task. Below are the five titles I sent over to Treharne:
“Oldboy” (Park Chan-wook)
”The Handmaiden” (Park Chan-wook)
”Burning” (Lee Chang-dong)
”Parasite” (Bong Joon-ho)
“Right Now Wrong Then” (Hong Sang-soo)
What are your favorite Korean New Wave films? Post them in the comments section!