“If You Were Me 2”, London Film Festival

Still from “Seaside Flower,” Park Kyung-hee

The 49th London Film Festival opens this week, running from 19 October–3 November. The festival features 9 “strands,” including “New British Cinema,” “Experimenta,” “Cinema Europa,” and this year’s largest with 54 films, “World Cinema.”

If You Were Me 2 is one of a strong cluster of South Korean films in the “World Cinema” strand. A series of shorts by five of the most talked about directors in Korean cinema (Park Kyung-Hee, Ryoo Seung-Wan, Jung Ji-Woo, Jang Jin, Kim Dong-Won), it follows on from the 2003 Festival success of If You Were Me. Both films were commissioned by the National Human Rights Commission of South Korea, and this year’s selection includes such subjects as the plight of North Korean refugees in the south, and police torture of a student activist in the 1980s.

If You Were Me 2 is on at the ICA at 9pm, 21 October, and 2pm, 24 October. To read a synopsis of the film click here.