It's more than a little ironic that the current economic crisis in Korea has come at a time when the country's film culture is in such good shape, with Korean cinema playing a significant part in the programme of this year's Forum. Nobody knows for sure how badly the economic crisis will affect the film industry, but it clearly won't help an already difficult situation. The Korean public has an insatiable appetite for everything from Hollywood blockbusters to Kiarostami and Tarkovsky. And Korea's directors are now making more varied and more adventurous movies than ever before. This year's Forum programme offers a good cross-section of the new current.
Barricade confronts Korean racism towards immigrant workers from other Asian countries.
Jang Yoon-Hyun's The Contact hustles a nervous romance into the internet age. Largely written, staged and directed by the street kids themselves, it exposes the dark underbelly of the failed economic miracle with a scabrous and deliberately shocking candour. It's hard to believe that directors as talented and daring as these will take long to find new sources of finance.