Bong Joon-ho and Song Kang-ho's Locarno Film Festival Talk Released on YouTube

Free Online Film Festival 'We Are One' Broadcasts on the 3rd of Next Month
"Immersed in Works Through Instinct and Intuition Rather Than Character Analysis and Logical Approach"
"Best Expresses Stories of Ordinary People Caught in Unique Situations"

Last August, a conversation between Olivier P?re, the executive director, and director Bong Joon-ho and actor Song Kang-ho at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland will be released through the online film festival "We Are One."

"We Are One" is a free online film festival jointly organized by twenty-one major international film festivals worldwide, including Cannes, Berlin, and Venice. As the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) led to the consecutive cancellation of international film festivals, Tribeca Enterprises, which hosts the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, partnered with YouTube to plan this event. Over ten days from the 29th of this month to the 7th of next month, it will showcase thirty-four feature films, seventy-one short films, and fifteen virtual reality (VR) films.

Sixteen conversations with directors and actors held at major international film festivals will also be introduced. The cast includes many filmmakers such as Cheng Long (成龍, Jackie Chan), Tessa Thompson, Jane Campion, Diego Luna, Guillermo del Toro, Nadav Lapid, Ian, Olivier Assayas, Zhang Ziyi (章子怡), Viggo Mortensen, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Soderbergh, and Alejandro Gonz?lez I??rritu.

The conversation between director Bong Joon-ho, actor Song Kang-ho, and executive director P?re at the Locarno International Film Festival will be released on the 3rd of next month. At that time, Song Kang-ho became the first Asian actor to receive the Excellence Award. This award is dedicated to actors who have enriched the world of cinema with outstanding talent. To commemorate this, the festival screened films such as "The King of Pigs," "Memories of Murder," and "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance."

P?re, who led the reappraisal, has worked as a programmer for the Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes International Film Festival and the Locarno International Film Festival and currently works as a cinema director at ARTE TV. He also participated as a New Currents jury member at the Busan International Film Festival in 2011.

In the conversation, Song Kang-ho said about acting in films, "I instinctively absorb the role inside me. Rather than analyzing the character and approaching it logically, I immerse myself in the work through instinct and intuition." Regarding "The King of Pigs," which caused a remarkable reaction at the festival, he said, "It is not a sports film. It is a drama dealing with the hope and courage of ordinary citizens living in modern society through wrestling," and added, "I performed the wrestling that the protagonist Dae-ho does myself. Even if technically a bit lacking, that was important to achieve the ultimate goal of the film."

When asked about the background of the remarkable works that emerged in Korea from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, director Bong Joon-ho said, "It seems that an adventurous generation appeared around the same time." He recalled, "If director Im Kwon-taek made films in an apprenticeship style and grew within the industry, the newly emerging generation started as cinephiles. Not only me but also directors Park Chan-wook, Kim Jee-woon, and Ryu Seung-wan were all people obsessed with films."

Regarding Song Kang-ho, he said, "I was amazed by the hyper-realistic acting he showed in director Lee Chang-dong's 'Green Fish.' It was a new level of acting that had never been seen before," and added, "From the time I was writing the script for 'Memories of Murder,' I had him in mind as the perfect fit. I was anxious about what would happen if he couldn't be cast." He continued, "He is the actor who best expresses the story of an ordinary person unexpectedly caught in a unique situation," and said, "Even when writing difficult tragicomedies in the script, thinking of Song Kang-ho makes me feel at ease, believing that it can be fully expressed."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.