HAEMOO Lands Gala Spot in Toronto

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NEWS & REPORTS

HAEMOO Lands Gala Spot in Toronto

Jul 23, 2014

Writer by Pierce Conran
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The Toronto International Film Festival has released its enormous first wave, revealing the titles that will fill up its Gala, Special Presentations and closing film slots. Among the Gala presentations taking place in Canada next month will be the international premiere of Haemoo, the directorial debut of SHIM Sung-bo, which is also produced and co-written by Bong Joon Ho.

Based on the stage play 'Haemoo', which is itself based on a real incident from 2001, Haemoo features a fishing boat whose crew decides to take on illegal stowaways when their catch doesn’t meet expectations. During the journey back from China to Korea, the vessel finds itself braving a stormy sea and chased by the Korean maritime police. During the voyage, the immigrants begin to suffocate to death.

Starring in the film are veterans KIM Yun-seok and MOON Sung-keun and young actor PARK Yoo-chun, a member of the Kpop group JYJ. Rookie director SHIM Sung-bo was previously a co-writer on Bong’s Memories of Murder (2003).

Previous Korean films that have secured gala slots in Toronto include The Good, The Bad and The Weird (2008), The Housemaid (2010) and last year’s Cold Eyes. Handling international distribution for Haemoo is Finecut, who represented four of the five Korean titles at TIFF last year (Intruders, Moebius, Our Sunhi and The Fake). Earlier this year during the Cannes Film Market, Finecut presold the film’s rights to Japan, France, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Distributed domestically by Next World Entertainment, the film is set to open locally on August 13th. TIFF, which is going into its 39th edition, will run from September 4th to 14th.

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