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Korean Fantastic: Features

Land of Happiness

JUNG Min-kyu

Korea2018 86min World Premiere

Synopsis

8 years ago, a man attends the memorial service of a friend who died instead of saving himself from suicide. When a man says he wouldn't anymore attend the memorial service after this year, friend's mother looks at him fiercely.

Program Note

This film begins with quite a shocking CCTV video. A man jumps into the subway tracks. Another man jumps in and gets killed by the subway entering the platform. Min-soo (Ji Yong-seok) survives while trying to kill himself in the video. Today is Min-soo’s birthday, but he doesn’t have a good mood. His parturient wife (Kim See-eun) requests him to stay with her, but Min-soo ignores her and heads for someone else’s home. The full food preparation hints a meeting. Except for the woman (Ye Su-jeong) who seems to be his mother, no one welcomes Min-soo. He is an uninvited guest in this house! Minsoo’s life requires someone’s death. The film gives little information as to why he attempted suicide. Nevertheless, considering that Korean society has been harsh on the plastic spoon, this is not an option that we do not understand. Land of Happiness asks questions of the condition of life in Korean society where people survive from someone’s death and live their lives as if they were caught in a spider web. What are the conditions for the ‘nation of happiness’ that the title refers to? The fact that life is a tragedy when one has to live on the premise of death is clear. (HUH Nam-woong)

Diretor

JUNG Min-kyu

He graduated from the film department at Seoul Institute of Arts. His short films are A Vending Machine Girl (2006), Vacant Room (2007), Super Salon Twilight Zone (2008) which have won at several Korean short film festivals. Land of Happiness is his feature debut film