ESCAPE FROM MOGADISHU and HEAVEN: TO THE LAND OF HAPPINESS to Bookend LKFF 

The London Korean Film Festival (LKFF) is returning for its 16th edition this year, which will run from November 4 to 19. This year’s event will feature a Special Focus on recent Academy Award-winner Youn Yuhjung and will open with Ryoo Seungwan’s acclaimed action hit Escape from Mogadishu.

The festival will then close with Heaven: To the Land of Happiness, the latest from director Im Sangsoo. The film was originally part of the Cannes Film Festival selection last year but will have its world premiere next month as the opening film of this year’s Busan International Film Festival (BIFF). 

Heaven: To the Land of Happiness, featuring Choi Minsik and Park Haeil in the lead roles, will also be part of the Youn Yuhjung retrospective as it features her in a supporting role. Youn has worked with Director Im several times, and two of those earlier collaborations, A Good Lawyer’s Wife (2003) and The Housemaid (2010), will also be featured.

The Youn Yuhjung Special Focus will also include the European premiere of a new 4K restoration of Youn’s debut, the acclaimed Kim Kiyoung film Woman of Fire (1971), a remake of his earlier masterpiece The Housemaid (1960). Kim’s final film, Angel, Become an Evil Woman (1990), will also be featured as a 4K presentation, screening for the first time outside of Korea,  along with E JYong’s 2016 film The Bacchus Lady.

Three other titles have also been confirmed for LKFF, with more to be announced soon - Hong Sangsoo’s latest film In Front of Your Face, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, Lee Joonik’s acclaimed new black and white period drama The Book of Fish, and Hong Seongeun’s debut film Aloners, which earned the Grand Prize at the Jeonju International Film Festival and went on to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival.