THE NET

그물

Directed by Kim Ki-duk

Masters / South Korea / 2016 / drama, thriller / 114 mins / Korean with English subtitles / DCP

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Watch Trailer

THE NET

UltraStar Mission Valley
Saturday, April 22, 2017 8:10 pm

Description

Official Selection, 2016 Venice Film Festival
Official Selection, 2016 Toronto International Film Festival

Provocateur Kim Ki-duk (3-Iron, Pieta) casts another grim though grossly energizing political thriller, this time set in the geopolitically and ethically murky middle ground between North and South Korea. A Northern fisherman drifts into Southern waters when his engine breaks down, and he’s captured and interrogated as a Communist spy. His responses reveal him to be merely an innocent, though proudly patriotic, laborer who only wants to provide for and return to his family.

But in Kim Ki-duk’s hands, even innocence must be as harrowing as biopolitical torture, as absurd as a Communist in an Under Armour tracksuit, and as grimy as an outhouse excavation. That’s because for Kim, nothing is more inhumane than the act of humanism, especially when egos are at stake. His fisherman is no mere victim – a hot potato in a cold war – but is a specimen of intelligence and physical intimidation, a nationalist body with a survivalist’s mind, smart enough to play two countries’ chessboards at once, but perhaps too steadfast in his own sense of self to know that statelessness and being a proper state subject are just two circles of the same hell. –Brian Hu

Director's Bio

Selected Filmography
2000: The Isle
2003: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring
2004: Samaritan Girl
2004: 3-Iron
2005: The Bow
2012: Pietà