DIRECTOR: Lee Chang-dong
PRODUCERS: Myeong Gye-nam, Ueda Makoto
PRODUCTION CO: East Film Company
SCREENPLAY: Lee Chang-dong
PHOTOGRAPHY: Kim Hyung-ku
EDITOR: Lee Jae-jin
MUSIC: Lee Jae-jin

WITH: Sul Kyung-gu (Kim Yong-ho), Moon So-ri (Yun Sun-im), Kim Yeo-jin (Hong-ja), Park Soo-young (Operative), Park Sung-yeon (Factory worker)

​​FESTIVALS: Cannes

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REVIEWS

“Yong-ho, now middle-aged, appears to be on the verge of suicide. Multiple flashbacks take us back in time to look at his life over the past two decades, from 1979 to 1999. In a period defined by a series of pivotal national events — the Gwangju Uprising, which reportedly left hundreds of people demonstrating against the military government dead; the subsequent repressive political environment; the rise and fall of the Korean economy — Yong-ho finds himself swept up by momentous forces beyond his control. Lee Chang-dong displays an extraordinarily deft touch in interweaving complex historical events and private life, national trauma and personal failure, portraying a man who is both victim and aggressor.”

– MOMA

“Peppermint Candy spans 20 years — from 1979 to 1999 — in the life of its protagonist Yong-ho, from naïve and optimistic adolescence to venomous, self-hating middle age. Novelist turned filmmaker Lee Chang-dong makes it clear that Yong-ho is in large part responsible for his own moral and spiritual decay, but he identifies one traumatic episode (his military service at the time of the Kwangju massacre in 1980) as a trigger and assigns a pernicious supporting role to the state’s culture of authoritarianism and corruption.

It adds up to a devastating indictment of the many mistakes Korea has made as it lurches towards democracy, but the focus on one man (brilliantly played by Sul Kyung-gu, who shot to stardom overnight) gives the film a very humane dramatic centre. Better yet, the inspired decision to tell the story in reverse chronology turns the film into a very moving and sometimes very disturbing quest for Yong-ho’s lost innocence.”

​– Tony Rayns, Vancouver International Film Festival 2000

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FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Canterbury
Monday, 12 May, 7.00pm

Whanganui
Monday, 26 May, 7.00pm

Palmerston North
Wednesday, 11 June, 6.00pm

Wellington     
Monday, 30 June, 6.15pm

Wellington     
Tuesday, 01 July, 8.30pm

Nelson  
Wednesday, 23 July, 6.00pm

​Hamilton   
Monday, 08 September, 6.30pm

Dunedin  
Wednesday, 17 September, 7.30pm

Auckland  
Monday, 29 September, 6.00pm

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RETRO CLASSICS >> 

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