A Normal Family by Hur Jin-ho will open the festival on the 2nd November at BFI Southbank with the director in attendance. The story is based on the celebrated Dutch novel Het Diner (The Dinner) by Herman Koch, which has sold over a million copies. The latest feature from veteran director Hur Jin-ho is a deft family portrait and a twisty melodrama in which roles reverse, exposing international and intergenerational rifts through various moral conundrums. Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman closes the festival on 16th November at BFI Southbank. Based on the Korean webtoon ‘Possessed’ by Hoo and Kim Hong-tae, the comedy action film revolves around a fake exorcist who ends up facing a real case of demonic possession. Starring actor Gang Dong-won (Broker, Peninsula), portrays a fake exorcist, Dr. Cheon. The film is the directorial feature debut of Director Kim Seong-sik, an assistant director to Bong Joon-ho on Parasite (2019) and Park Chan-wook on Decision to Leave (2022).

Special Screenings include Riceboy Sleeps by Korean-Canadian writer-director Anthony Shim. Loosely based on his own life, Riceboy Sleeps is a drama about a Korean single mother raising her young son in Canada in the 1990s. Cinema Now offers an exciting range of contemporary films, the very latest in Korean cinema. First up, the LKFF’s annual presentation of the latest work of much-loved auteur Hong Sangsoo, Walk Up sees the director reunited with actor Kwon Haehyo and In Front of Your Face (2020) star Lee Hyeyoung. Hong’s monochrome tale of talk and time shows us where private and public selves differ, and how relationships shift. Hail to Hell is a fascinating adventure story and an ironic moral drama created by Writer/director Lim Oh-jeong who combines outlandish planning and imagination. Director Lim will be attending the Q&A and talk event. Chang Hang-jun’s taut neo noir Open The Door, looks back over the disintegrating lives of a migrant Korean family across two generations in New Jersey, while inverting its own episodic chronology to suggest inevitable, with every opened door closing on a brighter future. Lee Hae-young’s beautifully stylised Phantom is a spy adventure set during the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945) yet coming with all manner of modern sensibilities. GreenHouse, writer-director-editor Lee Sol-hui’s debut feature, portrays Moon-jung (Kim Seo-hyung)’s struggles as a caregiver to raise enough funds to move from the greenhouse where she lives into a real home for her and her son. Park Sang-min’s I haven’t Done Anything begins with a YouTube-style video documentary about former child actor Oh Tae-kyung, known as“Little Oh Dae-su” for his role as the younger version of Choi Min-sik’s character in Oldboy.