Jiseul

On the island of Jeju the people rise against police violence; those who rise are declared communists and the army is sent in. The film tells of people who fled their villages in the winter of 1948 and took shelter in a cave. Around a hundred and twenty of them wait there for sixty days in cold and hunger, while outside are soldiers under orders to shoot. The account builds that waiting not with large scenes but with small talk inside the cave. People joke, gossip and argue about when they can go back, and as the wait grows longer that endurance wears down. Images shot in black and white set the tone. The title means potatoes in the Jeju dialect and the account speaks in the island’s own tongue. What is told really happened, and the film recalls those days through a work of fiction. O Muel’s hundred and eight minute South Korean film was completed in 2013 and won the world cinema dramatic grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival.