Arirang

During the shooting of Kim Ki-duk's previous film, Dream, an actor came close to dying in a hanging scene. After that day the director found he could no longer make films and withdrew to an unheated hut in the mountains. Arirang was made in that hut, alone, with a digital camera in his hand. Kim films himself, asks himself questions, answers his own questions from another position and at times shouts at himself. What comes out is neither documentary nor fiction: a record of a director putting himself under interrogation. Across a process spread over three years, Kim speaks openly both about why he could not shoot and about the accusations made against his own cinema. The title comes from Korea's best-known folk song, which Kim sings several times in the film. It took the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes in 2011. It is not a comfortable film to watch and does not want to be.