TWENTY TWO Secures Korean Release on Comfort Women Day

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TWENTY TWO Secures Korean Release on Comfort Women Day

Jul 30, 2018

Writer by Pierce Conran
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Record-Breaking Documentary to Bow August 14

The documentary Twenty Two (2016), which examines the lives of the remaining comfort women in China, will find its way to Korean theaters on August 14, the date recognized as the commemoration day for comfort women. Directed by GUO Ke, the film was a major hit in China last year.

Twenty Two features interviews of the last surviving comfort women in China, who numbered just 22 at the time the film was made, down from the estimated 200,000 Chinese women who were forced into sexual servitude by the Japanese military during World War II. Presently, only seven of the 22 women depicted in the film are still alive.

A co-production between China and Korea, Twenty Two was initially unveiled at the Busan International Film Festival in 2016. The film went on to be a massive hit when it was released in China in 2017, becoming the market’s most successful documentary of all time with USD 25 million in theatrical receipts. It has since been overtaken on the all-time charts by this year’s Amazing China.

The topic of comfort women has been a popular one in Korean cinema over the past few years. Several titles have found huge success with audiences, including the crowd-funding indie period drama Spirits’ Homecoming (2016), which became the most successful narrative indie film in Korean cinema history with almost 3.6 million admissions, and last year’s Chuseok holiday sleeper hit I Can Speak (2017), which was seen by close to 3.3 million viewers. Last month, MIN Kyu-dong also unveiled his comfort women trial drama Herstory.

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