LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL 2026
Opening Gala: THE JOURNEY TO GYEONG-JU
Closing Gala: TRISTES TROPIQUES
Special Screening: POSSIBLE LOVE
The 21st edition of London Korean Film Festival (LKFF) will run from 2 November to 16 November across BFI Southbank, Ciné Lumière, and the Institute of
Contemporary Arts (ICA). Organised by the Korean Cultural Centre UK (KCCUK) and with the generous support of the Korean Film Council, the festival enters its third decade of celebrating Korean cinema in the UK. This year’s festival opens with the UK premiere of Kim Mi-jo’s The Journey to Gyeong-ju (2025), a star-studded crime drama with grieving matriarch Ok-sil (Parasite’s Lee Jung-eun) andher three daughters (Gong Hyo-jin, Park So-dam, Lee Yeon) embarking on a road trip to avenge the murder of the youngest family member, followed by a Q&A with director Kim and actor Lee Jung-eun. Lee will also be attending a special screening of her other new work — Pil Gam- seong’s My Daughter Is a Zombie (2025), an adventurous and heartfelt comedy adapted from Lee Yoon-chang’s hugely popular webtoon about a father caring for his zombie virus infected daughter.
For the Closing Gala, we are delighted to present the UK Premiere of Park Hoon-jung’s Tristes Tropiques (2025), alongside a Q&A with the filmmaker. Well-known for his gritty and ruthless action dramas like New World (2013) and The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion (2018), Park returns with a bloodbath triggered by the death of a kill-squad leader. The film won the Nouveau Genre Grand Prize, the top honour in the international competition at the 32nd L’Étrange Festival
Our Special Screening strand includes a selection of the most anticipated contemporary Korean titles and offers a rare chance to see them on the big screen. This includes Lee Chang-dong’s anticipated new film Possible Love (2026), the winner of Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. Lee’s relationship drama delivers a riveting portrait of class and the disparity between the have and have nots in Korean society nowadays. There will be a recorded
introduction by director Lee.
We are also delighted to present a special screening of Yoon Ga-eun’s The World of Love (2025), a moving portrayal of a high school student’s life that was hailed by many critics as the best Korean new release last year, ahead of its UK and Ireland cinema release on 27 November. Another much-looked-forward-to film is Frederik Sølberg’s Hana Korea (2025), in which Kim Minha (Pachinko) delivered an astonishing performance playing a young North Korean refugee who is trying to adjust to her new life. The festival will also see the UK premiere of Once We Were Us (2025), the latest romantic drama — a remake of Rene Liu’s acclaimed Us and Them (2018) — by director Kim Do-young, whose debut feature Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 (2019) was a major success.
Apart from the exciting special screenings, our Cinema Now strand showcases a wide range of newly released Korean films that cannot be missed including Time of Cinema (2025) is a love letter to the movie theatre directed by three leading filmmakers in contemporary Korean cinema, Lee Jong-pil, Yoon Ga-eun, and Jang Kun-jae. This reflexive anthology poses questions about what movies are for and where their magic lies.
Kim Tae-kyeong’s Home A Loan (2026) is a psychological thriller about a woman who moved into an abandoned, semi-derelict building with her two children in the belief that it will soon be developed but then started to see and hear strange things that turns her into an entire different person. Another title that would satisfy a craving of gripping suspense is Yoo Jong-seok’s debut feature Be My Baby (2025), a tense tale of two not-quite sisters, both desperate and in trouble and so much more.
