Miracle: Letters to the President

1988, a mountain village in Korea. The only way out is a rail line that runs through tunnels and over bridges. The train does not stop there, so the villagers walk the tracks, and over the years many of them have died doing it. Joon-kyeong, a gifted high school student, writes letter after letter to the president asking for a station. Lee Jang-hoon directs and co-writes, in his second feature. Park Jung-min plays Joon-kyeong, Lee Sung-min his father, with Yoona and Lee Soo-kyung alongside. The story rests on a real case. A Korean village did win a rail stop, through years of petitions and its own labour. The film builds a family around that fact and puts its real weight there, in the silence between a father and a son. It opened on 15 September 2021, drew nominations at the 42nd Blue Dragon and 58th Baeksang awards, and won the Audience Award at the 24th Udine Far East Film Festival. Who it is for: viewers who respond to Korean family drama that is sentimental but carefully built. Who it is not for: the last half hour is determined to make you cry and makes no secret of it. If open sentiment puts you off, this will be hard going.