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The 10 best Korean films of all time, based on Korean Film Archive’s 50th anniversary poll
- The Korean Film Archive has ranked its top 100 Korean films for a third time, voted on by 240 industry professionals. These are its top 10
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To mark the 50th anniversary of its founding, the Korean Film Archive (KOFA) has published its third Top 100 Korean films list.
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Voted on by 240 film professionals, including this writer, the list features far more recent films than past editions, as well as a big jump in the number of films by women filmmakers ranked.
Byun Young-ju was the only woman featured in previous lists; this time she is joined by Yoon Ga-eun, July Jung, Lee Kyoung-mi, Kim Bo-ra, Yim Soon-rye and Park Nam-ok, who made The Widow (1955), Korea’s very first film directed by a woman.
Park Chan-wook, who, along with Bong Joon-ho, appears twice in the top 10, is the most represented director on the list, with seven titles featured. Among actors, Song Kang-ho and Ahn Sung-ki are tied with a whopping 19 films each.
Below we present the Top 10 on KOFA’s list. The rest of the list, available on the KMDB website (in Korean for the moment), is listed chronologically.
10. The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (1996)
Hong Sang-soo is the most prolific Korean director of the modern era; his 31st film, A Traveler’s Needs, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year. With many of them lauded as masterpieces, it must have been a hard choice to select a favourite for this list.
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