Bem Vindo à Aldeia

This movie won the 2006 Udine Far East Festival a big festival about Asian cinematography. At the end of the screening the audience applauded the director Kwang-Hyun Park and the movie for 5 minutes and gave him the audience award with a clear margin above the other festival movies (and many movies where very good!) This is a great film. The story is a great mix of dramatic and comical moments, with some interesting characters as the crazy girl of Dongmakgol (Hye-jeong Kang) and the northern and southern soldiers. Technically the movie is beautiful. Great visuals, simple but effective and good editing that keeps a good pace though all the film. The musics are good but there is no score that you are going to remember. The acting is very good and all the main actors can keep up well all the changes in the mood of the movie and they can do both good comical scenes and dramatic ones. I have no great experience in Korean movies, but this one is surely the best one i've ever seen and I suggest to try and see it, i'm sure that you will have no regrets in doing that.

(Sorry for my "stumbling" English, i'm Italian and i'm not so good in learning foreign languages :P )

I just cant believe how much I became fond of the characters and hows visually beautiful this film is. The score is gently leading you along as this touching tale unfolds.

The different layers of the story adds much deserved humanity to the characters - which were well cast. Especially the crazy girl of the village (Hye-jeong Kang from the film Old Boy).

The film brings together the South Korean/American Allies and the Communist North so that they saw eye to eye as human beings, due to the example of innocence radiating from the village. I'm looking forward to the director of Welcome to Dongmakgol's future work.

Basically a really really good film! Korean cinema is really finding its way.

Many Thanks, Ricky Thind

During the Korean war, soldiers on both sides find themselves in a mountain town where the villagers didn't even know that a conflict was being fought. The battle scenes are chaotic, brutal and intense, in the vein of Saving Private Ryan, with strong emotional impact following the humanity seen from everyone. We aren't led to believe that anyone is "evil", there is good and bad in everyone(yes, that goes for the American troops seen, as well). You really find yourself responding to the characters, recognizing traits and such. Do we like everyone? No, just like in real life. The FX are great with occasional exceptions(especially the CGI, I'm afraid... though it really isn't that big a part of this). This is well-acted, and I implore you to accept the subtitles. The realism is impeccable, and you can practically feel the pain and impact when a bullet hits. This is filmed and edited rather well. It keeps to a good pace, so the 133 minutes pass pretty smoothly. There is a moderate amount of bloody, violent and disturbing content in this. I recommend this to any fan of dramas. 8/10

Upon approaching this flick i was a tad sceptical - i knew with the cast, director and musical score covered nicely - there was no reason for it to be a let down, but i always find myself slightly dubious of war films. JSA was fantastic though so i gritted my teeth, held my breath and hoped for the best. Absolutely F'in glad i did, its such a well shot beautiful tale, the cinematography is highly original for the premise of a war film, the colours and dialogue were spot on and the actors all came correct. I found myself wishing that i could just F it all and go live in that cool village with that crazy girl for the rest of my days, ha ha. Thats not to say this film is completely void of any gritty (and sometimes gory) realism on the 'war' front but it just doesn't focus so much on the agony, more so on the individual and the reasons behind such atrocities. Its not a short film, but i found myself not wanting it to end. Some scenes in particular bring light relief and patch the whole thing up into a marvellous little epic. I highly highly recommend it to fans of beautiful cinema.

The tragedy of this film is that it's not playing in every theatre in the U.S. so it can be seen by the people who most need to see it. Thank you, Korean American friend of a friend who shared it with us.

See this film if you or someone care about is thinking about signing up to go into the military. See it if have been, or if you've ever known anyone who was, in a war. See it if you have ever seen a peace march - live or on television - and asked,"What's it all about?" See it if you love life.

Don't worry; it's not propaganda or any kind. It just takes us to the scene of the action, sets us down, then lets us get to know some very real people and watch what happens.

Carolfrances