Archive of films Memories of Murder / Sarinui chueok

South Korea
2003, 127 min

Section: Another View
Year: 2004

A series of brutal rapes and murders took place between 1986 and 1991 in the South Korean town of Hwa-sung. The murderer of ten women was never caught, even though over the course of the investigation 3,000 suspects were held and 300,000 policemen were gradually involved in the search. With this film, the director returned to a case which for many years horrified the Korean public…

Synopsis

This movie, which broke box office records at home, is one of the most debated Korean films of the past year. The story was inspired by real events – a series of unsolved murders which happened between 1986 and 1991 in the small town of Hwa-sung not far from Seoul. Over the course of six years, ten women were raped and murdered within a radius of two kilometres. Among them a 71-year-old grandmother and a 13-year-old girl, and there doesn’t seem to be any connection the police can make. Detectives Cho, Park and Seo interrogate around  300,000 policemen to help with the investigation. But to catch and convict an elusive mass murderer whose cold-bloodedness in a nightmare even for the most experienced of professionals, is a task which is clearly beyond human strength... Director Bong Joon-ho dedicated his film to the ten woman who, were it not for those ten terrrible rainy evenings, might still be alive.

About the director

Bong Joon-ho, who has a number of short films to his credit – White Man, The Memories in My Frame and Incoherence – made his debut in 1999 with the feature Barking Dogs Never Bite, which was shown in the overview New Korean Cinema at Karlovy Vary in 2001. The director said about his second film: "I like criminal films, which is why I chose this theme. I hesitated for a long time about whether I had the right to make the film. I thought of the families of the victims, because this isn’t a detective story thought up just to be unravelled, but a real event, accompanied by horror, grief, pain and the anger of the bereaved. I am very sorry for those women who died in such cruel circumstances, but I also wanted to show the investigators, who at that time were under exceptional pressure from the public, as human beings who had feelings, and were desperately trying to catch the murderer.”

Contacts

CJ Entertainment Inc.
26th Fl., Parnas Tower 521, Teheran-ro, 06 164, Seoul
Korea (Democratic People's Republic of)
E-mail: [email protected]

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About the film

Color, 35 mm

Section:	Another View

Director:	Bong Joon-ho
Screenplay:	Kim Gwang-rim
Dir. of Photography:	Kim Hyung-Koo
Music:	Iwashiro Taro
Editor:	Kim Sun-min
Producer:	Tcha Sung-jai
Production:	Sidus Corporation
Cast:	Song Gang-ho, Kim Sang-kyung
Contact:	CJ Entertainment Inc.