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Before he fell victim to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, and a tragic personality of sorts due to the circumstances of his death, Kim Ki-duk had already become a controversial figure in Korean cinema. The thing in question were not his films, but his on-set behavior that included physical and even sexual violence towards the actresses, by himself or by his collaborators, so he was basically cancelled from his own country's cinema and spent the rest of his life in different Asian and European parts of the former Soviet Union, where he also filmed his two final movies. “Call of God” is a Kyrgyz-Estonian-Lithuanian co-production.

It is questionable if “Call of God”, that premiered at last year's Venice and we caught at Belgrade Fest, could be called his proper movie, since it was not finished by him, but by his Estonian colleagues led by Artur Veeber. However, Kim completed the photography...

After a lifetime spent creating outrage and offence, both on and off screen, Korean master Kim Ki-duk has left the world with this final film, finished by his friends after his death. The story of a passionate affair that curdles almost immediately into jealousy and hate – but ends on a lyrically wistful note – is a startlingly appropriate rogue’s epitaph.

Call of God was shot in Kyrgyzstan, Estonia and Latvia in 2019. Kim died of complications from Covid in late 2020 at age 59; the film was assembled by Artur Veeber, his Estonia-based producer. Sexual manipulation, seething violence, spiritual yearning and the consoling beauty of the natural world – all the signal elements of his work since his debut with Crocodile in 1996 – are here. It is a minor film but, like everything he made, distinctively his.

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