Last year, local film distribution house Drafthouse Films took a gamble on Belgian gangland drama Bullhead, and it paid off with an Oscar nomination. Now they’re rolling the Academy dice again with South Korea’s Pietà, the latest from award winning director Kim Ki-Duk.
Pietà is this year’s film from South Korea eligible for in the Best Foreign Language Film category – the same category in which Bullhead (reviewed here) scored a nomination this year.
South Korea has never even been nominated for a foreign language Academy Award. Considering how many great genre films it has produced recently, and how many innovative directors it has produced (seriously, no Oscar for Park Chan-wook, but Kevin Costner gets to cuddle the bald shiny guy?) it’s an honor well overdue. Could Ki-duk be the man to do it? Having already won the Silver Bear from Berlin and the Silver Lion from Venice for his earlier work, he now heads into award season with the Golden Lion on his shelf for Pietà. In a statement, Drafthouse COO James Emanuel Shapiro said, “With one Foreign Language Academy Award nomination for this year’s stunning breakout film Bullhead, we have high hopes to repeat.”
Drafthouse Films is pushing hard into the niche of high-quality foreign dramas. As founder Tim League told me earlier this year, there’s very few companies filling that demand. Now with Bullhead on DVD and Bluray, ocker-shocker Wake in Fright out this week, and Filipino drama Graceland due early next year, Pietà is in good company.
Here’s the official synopsis:
Hired by moneylenders, a man lives as a loan shark brutally threatening people for paybacks. This man, without any family therefore with nothing to lose, continues his merciless way of life regardless of all the pain he has caused to a countless number of people. One day, a woman appears in front of him claiming to be his mother. He coldly rejects her at first, but gradually accepts her in his life. He decides to quit his cruel job and to live a decent life. Then suddenly the mother is kidnapped. Assuming that it would be by someone he had hurt in the past, he starts to track down all the people he had harassed. The man finally finds the one, only to discover most horrifying dark secrets better left unrevealed.
Sound interesting? Pietà will be released in early 2013 on VOD and theatrical. If you can’t wait, you can download a clip here.
This article appears in October 5 • 2012.
