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K-dramas are widely known for their impeccable blending of genres, mixing heart-pounding thrills and action with heartwarming and passionate romances into one incredible show. Thriller K-dramas, in particular, are known for their artful collision of high-stakes action scenes with captivating and intense romances. From love stories set against the backdrop of an ongoing war to political thrillers with the classic trope of bodyguards falling in love with their charge, there is a vast and diverse range of action-romance K-dramas.

Incredible must-watch action romance K-dramas must expertly balance the complexities of human emotions and love with high-octane, high-stakes storylines. The tension and conflict in such K-dramas serve as the catalyst for characters to self-reflect, face their inner demons, and find love despite unusual circumstances. These thrilling action-filled K-dramas can keep audiences on the edge of their seats in anticipation of both the dramatic plots and the compelling romances.

Healer (2014) Starring Ji Chang-wook...

(Welcome to Under the Radar, a column where we spotlight specific movies, shows, trends, performances, or scenes that caught our eye and deserved more attention ... but otherwise flew under the radar. In this edition: "Return to Seoul" makes its case for Best Actress, "Broker" offers some perspective, and "All That Breathes" reminds us never to underestimate the narrative power of documentaries.)

As much as some may roll their eyes at the pomp and circumstance of awards season, the end of February and the beginning of Oscars March Madness makes it feel even sillier for cynics to pretend like the Academy Awards and other buzzy awards shows don't really matter. All throughout the last month, nine of the 10 Best Picture nominees were playing in theaters nationwide, giving audiences a chance to experience the highlights of 2022's cinematic "canon" for themselves. And you know what? It paid off.

Far too many movies...

There are a few different languages in Davy Chou’s “Return to Seoul” — French, Korean, a smattering of English — but perhaps the most important is music. The film’s initial third follows protagonist Freddie’s (Park Ji-min) first trip to Korea as a young adult after her adoption by a French family, where she almost stumbles into meeting her biological father (Oh Kwang-rok); throughout the film but especially in this section, Chou emphasizes the failure of translation to express the fullness of what a person wants to say, as Freddie’s biological aunt (Kim Sung-young) softens both Freddie’s sharply defined boundaries and her father’s boundless longing for connection.

There’s something tragically incomplete about Freddie: She’s French but with a piece of herself missing, Korean but alienated from that culture. Never truly home anywhere she goes, she rages against her sense of abandonment. It’s like Chou...

“Do you know what sight-reading is?” a young woman asks her dining companions. Neither of them know, so she explains: When you look over a score for the first time, “you have to able to analyze the music in one glance, evaluate the danger… and jump in.” The key is knowing how to read the signs, she adds. That applies to both music and in life.

Her name is Frédérique (Park Ji-min), though everyone calls her Freddie. She is South Korean by birth, but only speaks French — having been adopted...

Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s ‘Drive My Car’ secures eight nods.

Park Chan-wook’s Decision To Leave leads the nominations for this year’s Asian Film Awards (Afa) with 10 nods including best film and best director.

Korean films have secured nominations in every category for the 16th edition of the awards, which will return to Hong Kong for the first time in three years, having been hosted in Busan for two years and not held in 2022.

Scroll down for full list of nominations

Korean romantic noir Decision To Leave premiered in Competition at Cannes last May, where Park won best director. As...

Park Chan-wook’s stylish crime drama Decision to Leave leads the nominations for this year’s Asian Film Awards with a sweeping 10 nods, including Best Director and Best Film.

The film’s impressive nominations haul also includes a Best Screenplay nod and acting nominations for leads Park Hae-il and Tang Wei, as well as below-the-line recognition for Cinematography, Editing, Music, and Production Design.

Decision to Leave follows a detective (Park Hae-il) investigating a man’s death in the mountains when he meets the dead man’s mysterious wife, a suspect in the case, and begins a tangled affair. The film debuted at Cannes where Park won the Best Director prize. Korea has also submitted the film as its entry for the international feature Oscar race.

Japanese filmmaker Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s Drive My Car trails with eight nominations. The epic road movie also debuted at Cannes, but in 2021. Elsewhere, Hirokazu Koreeda...

Return to Seoul Review — Return to Seoul (2022) Film Review, a movie written and directed by Davy Chou and starring Park Ji-Min, Oh Kwang-rok, Guka Han, Kim Sun-young, Yoann Zimmer and Louis-Do de Lencquesaing. In Davy Chou’s thematically complex new drama, Return to Seoul, Park Ji-Min shines playing a 25-year old woman named Frederique [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Return To Seoul (2022): Park Ji-Min Succeeds in a Leading Role in a Complex but Somewhat Incomplete Dramatic Film...

"You have to evaluate the danger and jump in." Sony Pictures Classics has unveiled an official trailer for an indie film from France titled Return to Seoul, from up-and-coming Cambodian-French filmmaker Davy Chou. This first premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, then went on to win the Audience Award at the Hamptons Film Festival. It has been submitted by Cambodia as their official entry to the Best Internatioanl Film category at the Academy Awards this year. A 25-year-old French woman returns to Korea, the country she was born in before being adopted by a French couple, for the very first time. She decides to track down her biological parents, but her journey takes a surprising turn. The film spans years of time, following her as she struggles to deal with her identity, her parents, and her place in the world. Newcomer Park Ji-Min gives an unforgettable performance as a troubled young woman,...

Acknowledged for making television documentaries, producer and director Han Sun-hee made this almost two-hour film specifically for the Blu-ray release of Chan Park-wook’s “Oldboy” by Plain Archive International, a South Korean Blu-ray producing company. Apparently, it also premiered at the 17th Jeonju International Film Festival held in South Korea in 2016.

This rather straightforward but engrossing documentary starts off with the camera following actor Oh Kwang-rok (the suicide man with the white dog from the film) as he walks towards the building where they filmed the roof top scene. It has been over ten years and he recalls that they could not film that day because the sky was too grey and foggy. Besides, some of the high-rise apartments that surround the site now were of course not there during filming. Interrupting Oh’s narrative are those familiar behind the scene images and footage of the actual film which become...

Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul is a bit of a misnomer for it is not about a return to Seoul, but many returns – if we can say that someone who never knew her homeland could be said to be returning at all…

The film opens some years in the past, with a young Frenchwoman showing up at a cute little hostel in the South Korean capital. Frédérique (Park Ji-Min) has made a last-minute decision to return to the country of her birth after being adopted as a baby by a (white) French couple. ‘Freddie’ quickly shows herself to be spontaneous and fearless, doing away with Korean custom and quickly turning a quiet dinner into a raucous, drunken all-nighter. Her new-found friends, who include the hostel receptionist Tena (Guka Han), are both enraptured and shocked by her, although audiences may find her snarky expression and slappable smirk a little less entrancing.

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

Cultural identity is a messy business. Its boundaries are undefined, its meaning is oft-debated, and yet it means so much and so little all at once. For transracial adoptees, that meaning is all the more muddled. Many children of Asian descent who are adopted by (usually white) parents from different countries find themselves perpetual outsiders — they look different than the friends and family they grow up alongside, but have a hard time finding a comfortable place in the cultures of their biological parents. "Return to Seoul," a restless, roaming adoption drama directed and written by Davy Chou, captures the ineffable angst of this feeling of not belonging, yet always yearning to belong.

Freddie Benoit doesn't want to meet her biological parents. Probably. Adopted by French parents from Korea as a baby, the 25-year-old young woman traveled to Seoul, Korea, on a whim — her usual trip to Japan got canceled — and...

In order to return somewhere, you first have to leave it. So it’s arguable whether the initial visit in Davy Chou’s strange, deep, changeable and wise “Return to Seoul” even qualifies in a meaningful sense as a return. 25-year-old Freddie (Park Ji-min), the film’s charismatic, mercurial protagonist, was adopted by French parents as a baby, and has no memory of the voyage that removed her from the country of her birth. But though she is the last to admit it, there is more to her jaunt to Korea than coincidence and idle curiosity. While Chou’s elliptical screenplay gently explodes many preconceived assumptions about the effects of adoption on adoptees, it is too clear-sighted to ignore the fact that whether biology affects identity or not, the mere possibility that such a link exists could exert a powerful attraction on a searching spirit not quite sure what it is searching for.

An adoptee explores her Korean roots in Return To Seoul, Davy Chou’s engaging drama premiering at Cannes in Un Certain Regard. Newcomer Park Ji-Min plays the magnificently complex Freddie, who was raised in France and has impetuously decided to spend a couple of weeks in the country of her birth.

There, Freddie befriends the first person she meets: Tena (Guka Han), who works at the funky little hotel Freddie is staying in. Tena gently encourages Freddie to visit the adoption agency, who offer to contact her birth parents. But Freddie’s encounters with her father aren’t easy.

The film then enters its second act, picking up on her life years later, while a third act continues her story, rather than concluding it. This is not a tale of harmonious endings, but an exploration of a character trying to come to terms with her past.

Park Ji-Min is an...

Arthouse distribution, streaming and production company Mubi has taken all rights for the U.K., Ireland, Italy, Turkey, India and Southeast Asia (excluding the Philippines and theatrical rights in Cambodia) for Davy Chou’s “Return to Seoul,” which plays in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival. MK2 films is handling international sales.

Sony Pictures Classics recently picked up rights in North America, Latin America, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand.

The film centers on 25-year-old Freddie, who on an impulse to reconnect with her origins, returns to South Korea for the first time, where she was born before being adopted and raised in France. The headstrong young woman starts looking for her biological parents in a country she knows so little about, taking her life in new and unexpected directions.

The film stars Park Ji-Min, Oh Kwang-Rok, Guka Han, Kim Sun-Young, Yoann Zimmer and Louis-Do De Lencquesaing.

French-Cambodian filmmaker’s narrative debut feature Diamond Island played Critics’ Week in 2016.

In the first major deal on an Official Selection title by a US buyer announced in Cannes, Sony Pictures Classics has acquired North America and multiple territories from MK2 Films to Davy Chou’s Korea-set All The People I’ll Never Be ahead of its world premiere in Un Certain Regard on May 22.

The distributor also picked up Latin America, Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand and said the previously announced English-language title has been changed to Return To Seoul.

French-Cambodian filmmaker Chou’s France-Germany-Belgium co-production follows Freddie,...

French-Cambodian filmmaker’s narrative debut feature Diamond Island played Critics’ Week in 2016.

In the first major deal by a US buyer to be announced in Cannes, Sony Pictures Classics has acquired North America, Latin America, Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand rights from MK2 Films to Davy Chou’s Korea-set All The People I’ll Never Be (Retour A Seoul) ahead of its world premiere in Un Certain Regard on May 22.

At the same it emerged that the previously announced English-language title All The People I’ll Never Be has been changed to Return To Seoul.

French-Cambodian filmmaker Chou’s France-Germany-Belgium co-production follows Freddie,...

In one of the first major deals of the Cannes market, Sony Pictures Classics has swooped on Un Certain Regard title “All The People I’ll Never Be.” The distributor has picked up rights in North America, Latin America, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand.

The film, which is written and directed by Davy Chou (“Diamond Island”), will be re-titled as “Return to Seoul.” It premieres in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday.

The pic centers on 25-year-old Freddie, who impulsively returns to South Korea for the first time, where she was born before being adopted and raised in France. The headstrong young woman starts looking for her biological parents in a country she knows so little about, taking her life in new and unexpected directions.

Produced by Charlotte Vincent under her Aurora Films banner and Katia Khazak, co-produced by Hanneke Van Der Tas,...

Ahead of its world premiere in Un Certain Regard section of Cannes, the Davy Chou directed and written feature All the People I’ll Never Be has been picked up by Sony Pictures Classics.

The New York-based specialty label took all rights in North America, Latin America, Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand.

They’ll release the movie under the new title, Return to Seoul. Pic makes its world premiere on the Croisette this Sunday.

On an impulse, Freddie, 25, returns to South Korea for the first time, where she was born before being adopted and raised in France. The headstrong young woman starts looking for her biological parents in a country she knows so little about, taking her life in new and unexpected directions.

Produced by Charlotte Vincent under her Aurora Films banner and Katia Khazak, co-produced by Hanneke Van Der Tas, Cassandre Warnauts, and Jean-Yves Roubin, and associate produced by Ha Min-Ho and Chou,...

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired the North American rights and other territories to “All The People I’ll Never Be,” a film from writer and director Davy Chou that is playing in the Un Certain Regard section on Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival.

SPC is also planning on re-titling the movie in English as “Return to Seoul,” which is the translation of its actual title in French. In addition to North America, the distributor also acquired rights to the film in Latin America, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand.

“All The People I’ll Never Be” is the story of a 25-year-old woman who, on an impulse, returns to South Korea, where she was born before being adopted and raised in France, for the first time. The headstrong young woman starts looking for her biological parents in a country she knows so little about, taking her life in new and unexpected directions.

It is no secret that Jero Yun champions the cause of North Korean refugees. This is evident from his shorts like “Hitchhiker” and his feature-length documentaries “Looking for North Koreans” and “Mrs. B: A North Korean Woman”. His debut fictional feature “Beautiful Days”, which debuted at and opened the Busan International Film Festival in 2018, also told a tale of a refugee. Now, he is back with his sophomore fictional feature “Fighter”, which also saw its premiere at the Busan International Film Festival, winning itself the Netpac Award and its star Lim Sung-mi the Best Actress award.

“Fighter” is screening at Five Flavours Asian Film Festival

Ji-na is a North Korean refugee who has just finished her social adjustment training and has been moved into a government-allocated studio apartment. She has but one aim in mind: earn enough money to get her father, who has already defected from the North and is waiting in China,...

The Berlin International Film Festival has set its full slate for the upcoming 2021 edition. Berlinale usually follows Sundance with a February festival, but the pandemic has forced organizers to develop a new festival format for 2021. The 71st Berlin International Film Festival is set to take place with the “Industry Event” from March 1 to 5, which will include the European Film Market (EFM), the Berlinale Co-Production Market, the Berlinale Talents, and the World Cinema Fund in online forms. From June 9 to 20, 2021 the Berlinale will launch a “Summer Special” with numerous film presentations in Berlin, both at indoor and outdoor cinemas.

Included in the March event is the traditional film festival slate, which includes the main Berlinale Competition lineup as well as sidebar sections such as Berlinale Special & Berlinale Series, Encounters, Berlinale Shorts, Panorama, Forum & Forum Expanded, Generation, Perspektive Deutsches Kino, and Retrospective. With the exception of the Retrospective, the films will be shown at the March event.

Today’s film is the 2011 short Night Fishing. The film is a collaboration between Chan-wook Park and his brother Chan-kyong Park, stars Jung-hyun Lee and Kwang-rok Oh, and was fully filmed with an iPhone 4. Chan-wook Park has been one of the major filmmakers from the South Korean film industry to have achieved international acclaim, particularly for his 2003 feature Oldboy, which is currently in the process of being remade by Hollywood filmmaker Spike Lee. Chan-wook Park’s english language directorial debut, Stoker, is currently playing in limited release in American theatres.

****...

Chicago – In our latest edition of HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: DVD, we have 10 DVDs up for grabs to “Oss 117: Lost in Rio” as well as 3 DVDs to South Korean thriller “Seven Days” with Yunjin Kim of ABC’s “Lost”!

“Oss 117: Lost in Rio” stars Jean Dujardin, Louise Monot, Rüdiger Vogler, Alex Lutz, Reem Kherici, Pierre Bellemare and Ken Samuels. “Seven Days” stars Yunjin Kim, Mi-suk Kim, Hie-sun Park, Myeong-su Choi, Hang-Seon Jang, Dong-hwan Jeong and Kwang-rok Oh.

To win your free DVD courtesy of HollywoodChicago.com, all you need to do is answer our question in this Web-based submission form. That’s it! Directions to enter this HollywoodChicago.com Hookup and immediately win can be found beneath the graphics below.

The movie poster for “Oss 117: Lost in Rio” with Jean Dujardin and Louise Monot.

Image credit: Music Box Films

The movie poster for “Seven Days” with Yunjin Kim...

[Our thanks to Charles Webb for the following review.]

The funeral has long been a dramatic staple to allow the audience to see the emotional undercurrents among family and friends. Usually, the stories are revelatory - the past and complicated present bubble to the surface and the characters must confront uncomfortable truths about themselves and each other. First time writer/director Seung-bin Baek's Members of the Funeral wanders confidently through some of the same dark territory using a mixture of a fractured timeline and intense performances to expose one family's relationship to a dead teenage boy. The film is an assured and incisive first-time effort looking like a million bucks but shot on the cheap.

The funeral is for a young man named Hee-jun, played with an enigmatic calm by Ju-seung Lee. For the principal characters he represents the embodiment of something that each of them craves or has lost - love, talent, or perfect friendship. Lee portrays...