Skip to main content
A Tour Guide film image

A Tour Guide

This event has passed

Canadian Premiere

The age-old tribulations of adapting to a new place are explored with freshness and sympathy in this first feature from Kwak Eun-mi, about a defector from North Korea struggling to make a better life for herself in Seoul. Han-young (Sul Lee) has parlayed her ability to speak Chinese into a job as a tour guide, with a cynical remit to persuade her customers to spend lavishly on her company’s goods. And, like anyone, she needs the money, to aid her family, and just to get by. But she’s seen as an outsider by South Koreans and treated with suspicion, and in her own experience, there’s little she can rely on. The original Korean title translates as “Someone you can trust”, and trust is in short supply here, save for the compassionate, careful eye which Kwak brings to bear on the proceedings. This is a gentle, low-key movie with a wonderful performance from Sul Lee as the shy, determined Han-young at its centre.

 

Best Actor, Jeonju 2023

October 2 & 4: Q&A with director Eun-mi Kwak

Director
Cast

Lee Sul, Oh Gyeung-hwa, Park Se-hyun

Credits
Country of Origin

South Korea

Year

2023

Series

Panorama

Language

In Korean with English subtitles

Film Contact
18+
94 min
Award Winners Drama Women Directors

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Credits

Producer

Keun-shik Joh

Screenwriter

Eun-mi Kwak

Cinematography

Young-ki Choi

Editor

Hyun-sook Choi

Production Design

Hye-young Son

Original Music

Soo-yeon Lee

Director

Eun-mi Kwak headshot

Eun-mi Kwak

After graduating from Kookmin University’s Department of Business Administration, Kwak, Eun-Mi majored in film at the Korean Academy of Film Arts. Beneath The Wheel (2015), her graduation piece, won the Women’s Human Rights Film Festival’s Pium Audience Award. After graduation, she won the Sonjae Award at the Busan International Film Festival and the Blue Dragon Film Award for Short Film with A Hand-Written Poster (2017).

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

The Life of Chuck

Dir. Mike Flanagan
111 min

The winner of the coveted Audience Award at TIFF last year, The Life of Chuck keeps us guessing about what it's up to and where it's going... Trust us, it's a keeper.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Graduate

Dir. Mike Nichols
106 min

In The Graduate Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman, 30 playing 20 with masterly understatement) comes home from college and is surprised to be seduced by the wife of his father's business partner, Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft).

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

blur: To the End

Dir. Toby L.
108 min

Now in their late 50s, Britpopsters blur (of Song 2 fame) do a celebratory lap of Great Britain culminating in their first ever Wembley Stadium show in this appealing observational doc. A companion piece to the concert film Live at Wembley Stadium.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Midnight Cowboy

Dir. John Schlesinger
113 min

Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman are street hustlers on different ends of the innocence / experience spectrum who establish something more than a business partnership in the seedy world of late 60s New York City in John Schlesinger's New Hollywood classic.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Sinners

Dir. Ryan Coogler
137 min

This year's unexpected box office sleeper is that rare beast, a genre movie full of bold invention and surprise. We are in Mississippi in the early 1930s, and the opening of a new blues joint on the edge of town is the signal for all hell to break out.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

The Headless Woman

Dir. Lucrecia Martel
87 min

The pictures tell the story -- and you better not blink -- when Veronica (the superb Maria Onetto) hits something on the road home. But what? She is too traumatized, or panic-stricken, to go back and look, and her fears are too terrible to acknowledge.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre