Air Murder

A man loses more than one member of his family in a short space of time to a lung disease nobody can account for. Doctors have no explanation, institutions stall, and nobody accepts responsibility. He starts his own investigation and finds the common factor: the humidifier disinfectant used at home. There are other families using the same product, and all of them have been through the same thing. Cho Yong-sun's film is adapted from a novel by So Ji-won and rests on a disaster that actually took place in South Korea. Humidifier disinfectants that stayed on the market from the nineteen nineties until 2011 killed or permanently injured thousands; most of the victims were infants and their mothers. A dedicated investigation team was not set up until 2016. The film lays out the share held by the companies and by the regulator, on the basis of what came out in the court cases.