Ryoo Seungwan’s hit action-drama Escape from Mogadishu (2021) has been invited to this year’s Dublin International Film Festival. Also selected for the Irish film event is Kimo Jisook’s short film Hairy Monster.

Released in the summer of 2021, Escape from Mogadishu became the year’s biggest homegrown hit after welcoming over 3.6 million viewers. It marked the second time that director Ryoo topped the annual list of local releases, following the smash success of Veteran in 2015, which soared to the third place on the all-time rankings (it has since dropped to fifth) with 13.4 million admissions.

Kim Yunseok and Zo Insung headline the film as the South Korean ambassador to Somalia and his counsel, who find themselves navigating complex diplomatic territory in Mogadishu in the early 1990s as they try to engineer a South Korean invitation into the United Nations. They butt heads with their North Korean counterparts, played by Huh Joonho and Koo Kyohwan, but when civil war breaks out in the country, the starkly opposed diplomats find themselves working together to escape the city.

First screened at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BiFan) in 2020, Hairy Monster follows a young aspiring screenwriter who is irritated by her mother’s boyfriend’s unruly hair and soon starts to see a ‘hairy monster’. 

This year’s Dublin International Film Festival is scheduled to unfold from February 23 to March 6.