Italian Festival Hosts Masterclasses with Moon, Bong Joonho and Yoo Teo

The Florence Korean Film Fest returned this spring and showcased an extensive program packed with current and classic Korean films. Among the highlights in its lineup, this year was a retrospective dedicated to celebrated actress Moon Sori. The festival also hosted three different masterclasses, one with Moon and the others with Parasite (2019) director Bong Joonho and rising star Yoo Teo (Vertigo, 2019).

The Moon Sori program comprised eight titles, including her debut in Lee Changdong’s Peppermint Candy (2000) and her standout role in Lee’s next film Oasis (2002), which earned her the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Emerging Stars from the Venice International Film Festival. 

Other titles included Im Sangsoo’s A Good Lawyer’s Wife (2003), Hong Sangsoo’s Hahaha (2010), Zhang Lu’s Ode to the Goose (2018), the legal comedy-drama Juror 8 (2018), and the Jeonju Cinema Project Three Sisters (2020), which Moon produced. The program also included her directorial debut The Running Actress (2017).

This year’s edition, which ran from May 21 to 28, opened with Kim Jongkwan’s Josée (2020) and closed with Park Jiwan’s THE DAY I DIED: UNCLOSED CASE (2020). Among the recent films on show were the mystery-thriller Intruder (2020), the award-winning indie Festival (2020), the action-drama Steel Rain2: Summit (2020), and the mystery Me and Me (2020), the directorial debut of veteran actor Jung Jinyoung.