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Hansel and Gretel: YIM’s Dark Fantasy Opens

Director YIM Pil-sung is back with his second feature, Hansel and Gretel, a fantasy-horror loosely based on the famous Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale and updated to modern day Korea.  While his debut feature Antarctic Journal (2005) placed a group of men in an icy, barren polar landscape, where the human psyche preys on itself, in Hansel and Gretel, director YIM uses a strange forest and house to explore even deeper recesses of the psyche and imagination. 

It stars CHUN Jeong-myeong (Les Formidables) as the Hansel figure, EUN Won-jae and SHIM Eun-Kyeong.  CHUN plays Eun-soo, a man who, while left wandering on a country road after an accident, meets a mysterious young girl and is led to her house in the middle of the forest. There, he meets her siblings and parents who live a fairytale-like life, eating cakes and sweets. The next day, when Eun-soo tries to leave, the forest brings him back again and he soon realizes he is trapped with the girl and her siblings who never age.  The Eun-soo’s fears increase when more adults arrive at the house. 

The film is expected to have striking visuals and surprising narrative twists.  Like YIM’s previous feature, the lines between what is real and imagined become blurry and the environment is an externalization of the human psyche.  Barunson Film Division was the production house behind this film and Cineclick Asia is handling international sales. Distributed locally by CJ Entertainment, the film will have its nationwide release Dec 27^th. 

Nigel D’Sa(KOFIC)