![Broker Broker film image, director Hirokazu Kore-eda](https://images.viff.org/uploads/2022/08/Broker.jpg?resize=600%2C337&gravity)
VIFF 2022 Closing Film
Working for the first time in South Korea, long-term festival favourite Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters) has come up with a sprawling crime story about a baby adoption scam. But in characteristic Kore-eda style, the tone is predominantly compassionate and melancholic—even the cops warm to the perpetrators. It helps of course that the baby broker, Sang-hyeon, is played by Song Kang-ho, the charismatic star of Parasite, Memories of Murder, The Host, and so many others (Song was named Best Actor at Cannes for this performance). His scheme involves intercepting infants abandoned at a church baby box, but things get messy when a young mom (Lee Ji-eun) changes her mind and discovers his racket. She decides to go along with him to meet the the baby’s prospective buyers—actually cops in a sting operation.
Kore-eda fashions plenty of twists and turns as Sang-hyeon, his accomplice (Gang Dong-won), and the girl try to evade the law and find a safe home for the child, but as always, he’s more invested in character than plot mechanics, and the truths we learn about this thrown-together family are revealed in simple, telling gestures, looks, and shadings.
Miraculous in its sensitivity, asking questions about issues of ethics, of choice, of money, and murder, and family, and how to find love in all this sorry mess.”—Ella Kemp, Indiewire
Best Actor (Song Kang Ho), Cannes 2022
Note: the Closing Gala screening of Broker will take place Saturday, October 8, 6pm at the Centre for Performing Arts.
Presented by
Hirokazu Kore-eda
Song Kang-ho, Gang Dong-won, Doona Bae, Lee Ji-eun, Lee Joo-young
South Korea
2022
In Korean with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Amadeus
In which the celebrated court composer Salieri welcomes a much ballyhooed young prodigy to Vienna. To his dismay, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is an impudent, callow upstart. Worse, he's a genius. Winner of 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Lyd
Lyd is the Arab name for 5000-year-old town that is now the Israeli city of Lod. Made by a Palestinian and a Jewish American, this creative non-fiction film excavates the history of this place leading to a detailed examination of the events of 1948.
The Goldman Case
In 1976, Jewish radical Pierre Goldman was facing the death penalty, accused of committing a double murder during an armed robbery. Goldman admitted to a string of similar robberies, but denied murder. Instead, he put the cops on trial.
His Three Daughters
Three sisters -- Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olson, and Natasha Lyonne -- congregate to attend the final few days of their father's life. They bring with them years of barely-repressed jealousy and resentment, as well as wildly different personalities.
Filtration: Three Colours: Blue
Directly filtering the image that comes into a lens allows cinematographers to vastly alter how a scene looks and feels. We'll analyze the radical ways Kieslowski's closet collaborator, Slawomir Idziak, editorializes in such films as Three Colours: Blue.
Green Border
In her seventies Agnieszka Holland has made a ferocious, emotionally charged film about the brutal treatment of refugees arriving over the Polish land border from Belarus. This is a vehement denunciation of resurgent fascism and utterly compelling cinema.
Credits
Executive Producer
Miky Lee, Kang Ho Sung
Producer
Lee Eugene
Screenwriter
Hirokazu Kore-eda
Cinematography
Hong Kyung Pyo
Editor
Hirokazu Kore-eda
Production Design
Mok Won Lee
Original Music
Jung Jae Il