The Vietnamese romantic comedy film ‘The Girl from Yesterday’ (2017) will be screened at the Lotte Cinema World Tower during the two-day Vietnamese film festival that starts in Seoul on July 18.
By Park Hye Ri and Hahm Hee-eun
Photos = Korean Film Council
Korea’s biggest Vietnamese film festival, Vietnam Film Days, will be held at the Lotte Cinema World Tower in Seoul for two days, starting at 6 p.m. on July 18. The event is co-organized by the Korean Film Council (KOFIC) and the Vietnam Cinema Department.
This is the second Vietnamese Film Days to be held in Korea after the first one that was held in January 2017 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Seoul-Hanoi diplomatic ties.
Up until recently, Vietnamese films were not easily accessible in Korea. The first Vietnamese film festival was only held as a one-time event to screen some Vietnamese films. However, starting this year, the need to increase access to Vietnamese films is being realized, so that Korean-Vietnamese multicultural families in Korea and international students from Vietnam would have more chances to see films from Vietnam. It would also give Korean audiences a chance to learn about the unique charms of Vietnamese cinema.
During the festival, two short documentaries and three feature films will be screened, all of them box office hits in Vietnam.
The top three feature films are “The Tailor” (2017), which depicts the story of a woman who goes through numerous challenges to rebuild a tailoring room for Vietnamese traditional dresses, “Jailbait” (2017), a romantic comedy about a high school student and a yoga teacher, and “The Girl from Yesterday” (2017), another romantic comedy film about life in university in Vietnam.In particular, “The Girl from Yesterday” has caught the attention of both Korean and Vietnamese critics due to the collaboration between director Phan Xine Linh and actress Miu Le. They previously worked together on “Sweet 20” (2015), a remake of the Korean film “Miss Granny” (2014).
The KOFIC is planning to screen at least one film per month, and, in total, 12 Vietnamese films per year. The films will be screened twice per week, at the Lotte Cinema in both Seoul and Busan.
Vietnam Film Days is coming to Korea. The event will be held for two days at the Lotte Cinema World Tower starting July 18.
The movie ‘Jailbait’ (2017) received the Golden Lotus Prize for the best feature film at the 20th Vietnamese Film Festival in Da Nang, Vietnam.
