[Movie 2015] Made In China 메이드 인 차이나

[ecs707a]

A photo from Rotterdam:

Director Kim Dong Hoo and producer Kim Soon Mo

source: IFFR facebook

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Made in China got an average audience rating of 3.806/5 in the "IFFR Audience Award" voting.  Its final rank was #63 (of 160).

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Finally we have a domestic premiere!  Made in China will be at the 16th Jeonju International Film Festival.

An article excerpt:
Ariel Kleiman’s PARTISAN to Open 16th Jeonju International Film Festival
by Pierce Conran / Mar 31, 2015

On Tuesday March 31st, in the Yeouido Island CGV in the heart of Seoul, the Jeonju International Film Festival (JIFF) held an event to announce the contents of it upcoming 16th edition, which will kick off on April 30th for 10 days. A varied slate of 200 films from 47 countries (158 features, 42 shorts) will be presented, led by Ariel Kleiman’s opening film Partisan from Australia.

Outside of JCP and the Korean Competition, Korean films this year will include new films by PARK Ki-yong (Motel Cactus, 1999), SHIN Yeon-shick (The Avian Kind), NO Zin-soo (The Suffered, 2014), LEE Sang-woo (Barbie, 2012), WHANG Cheol-mean (Oldmen Never Die, 2013) and BONG Man-dae (Playboy Bong, 2013), as well as KIM Dong-hoo’s Made in China and ROH Gyeong-tae’s Black Stone, which screened in Rotterdam earlier this year.

source: kobiz

[ecs707a]

More on Jeonju...

It's in the Korea Cinemascape section.  More about the section and the movie:

Korea Cinemascape is an invitational section mostly consisting new movies of directors that have directed 2 or more movies. Additionally, even though the movies rely more on tradition than the films in the competition section, the movies invited in this section have more degree of completion and the persuasive power of the topic.

Kim Donghoo’s Made in China is an interesting movie from team Kim Ki-duk featuring identity issues and violation of human, this movie is also invited to this year’s IFF Rotterdam.

Source: Korea Cinemascape description from JIFF website

Here's the movie's page on the JIFF website.

[ecs707a]

Japanese version of the poster:

From articles: 1 2

There's some sort of limited Japanese release coming up in June, I think, from what I can get from Google translate.

A different version of the trailer (Japanese-subbed) can be accessed from the second article above, or here, with Korean subs in addition:

credit: extmovie_channel

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A couple of photos from JIFF of the Q&A session with the director on May 1:

From the JIFF Event Scenery photo gallery

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Domestic release date: June 2015!

Kim Ki-duk’s ‘Made in China’ confirmed for June release

The sixth movie written and produced by director Kim Ki-duk “Made In China” will be released in Korean in June.

(OSEN)

The movie follows the events surrounding a Chinese man named “Chen” and an agent of the Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety named “Mi.”

Both “Chen” and “Mi” are after the truth surrounding the level of mercury found in eels imported from China.

“Chen” will be played by Park Ki-woong and “Mi” will be played by actress Han Chae-ah.

The character played by Park, who played a North Korean spy in the movie “Secretly, Greatly,” is after the truth, while “Mi” is a government employee who needs to hide the truth.

By Choi He-suk (cheesuk@heraldcorp.com)

source

 

Edit: the other new still, and larger versions of the two above...

credit: daum

[ecs707a]

Finally a proper poster.

source: daum

And it opens June 25, so there's finally a specific date too. Yay!

Edit:

Apparently that 690 in the corner is a reference to China's country code used in bar codes.  However, it apparently may or may not have anything to do with the country of origin of the product, just where the bar code was assigned.  Ha, this movie poster just taught me something.

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30s trailer:

credit: 민병석

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@ecs707a Thank you for highlighting this movie and starting this thread. I can't wait to watch it

 

[ecs707a]

@ecs707a Thank you for highlighting this movie and starting this thread. I can't wait to watch it

 

No problem.   I'm happy to share what little info there is.  I'm also waiting impatiently to see it, and I really, really hope it actually happens someday.  It feels like forever already...I made the thread 8 months ago when it was at Tokyo, and they'd already released a short clip months before that even, in March of 2014.  But I'm feeling a little more hopeful now that it's getting a proper release in Korea.  Fingers crossed it makes it elsewhere too.

 

A couple more stills I never got around to posting:

Lim Hwa Yeong

And the eel, of course

credit: daum

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Press conference and media preview, June 19, 2015

Group:

 

Director Kim Dong Hoo:

 

Lim Hwa Yeong:

Spoiler

 

Han Chae Ah:

Spoiler

Photo sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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A BTS photo from HCA's agency, Family Actors:

From family_actors instagram

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Press conference videos

Highlights:

credit: 티브이데일리

 

Full version:

credit: CINEMA NEWS

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Review!

[HanCinema's Film Review] "Made in China"

2015/06/20

Chen (played by Park Ki-woong) is a Chinese eel farmer who smuggles himself into South Korea to get his eels tested, in an effort to figure out the transnational reasons behind familial business failures. Incidentally, Chen looks very hot with his shirt off and is surprisingly good at fighting people as long as he's not blindsided. There's just one problem. Try as he might, Chen will forever be marked by the fact that he was "Made In China".

That's the weird thing about international capitalism. Not just products, but actual people are treated as, well, products. Chen's errand in South Korea is a very simple one, but because he's not a rich man with mountains of paperwork it takes quite some time for him to actually resolve the issue with the eels- a process which on the Korean end literally just requires a few minutes to run a lab test. And the big joke on that front is that it turns out the testing process designed to keep men like Chen out of the market rather bizarrely does not keep his products out of the market.

Another layer of absurdity is the fact that Chen can't speak Korean. As one memorable scene demonstrates there are very few words he actually needs to know anyway. But that's just it. The language barrier isn't that big a deal, because Chen knows exactly what he wants. Weirdly enough, it's Mi (played by Han Chae-ah) who typifies the more awkward struggles of modernity, as a metropolitan Korean woman with a bad attitude who takes an arbitrary liking to Chen- even though she can't actually speak Chinese.

But again, verbal communication isn't actually that important. When Chen gets involved with gangsters, the gangsters themselves clearly do not know or care much about the product they're selling- although this revelation takes on obvious ironic undertones given the nativist streak "Made In China" exposes. Frequently it seems like the main thing that baffles Chen is how Korean people can take so little apparent interest in their work and livelihood.

It's a sense of general bewilderment that Park Ki-woong communicates quite effectively. What "Made In China" really demonstrates is that culture shock isn't about abstract nonsense like Confucianism. It's about day-to-day living. And even culture shock's not that big a deal to Chen because he knew from the outset he was coming to a different country. What Chen wasn't expecting was that the people in South Korea would be such blatant hypocrites. And the South Koreans too, are puzzled by Chen's strange brand of sentimentalism.

"Made In China" is a very introspective, very deliberately ironic product that obviously begs for greater analysis. Even though I am neither Korean nor Chinese I found the sheer weird normality in the movie to be fascinating, because it's only from an outsider's view that we can see how weird normality really is. I feel like I should note, for the sake of completion, that "Made In China" reunites the second leads from "Bridal Mask". A strange coincidence to be sure, but that's what this film is full of- odd ironic fates that make sense even if you weren't expecting them.

Review by William Schwartz

source: Hancinema

 

[ecs707a]

There's finally a higher res version of the original poster (the one they were using in Tokyo):

from kobiz

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DVD release info...for Japan.  Release date: September 2, 2015

I see it on Yesasia and on amazon.jp.  I'm still hoping for a Korean release, or better yet (but probably too much to hope for), a US release.  Region 2 is more difficult than either region 1 or 3.

Anyway, bigger version of the Japanese poster/DVD cover from amazon.jp:

 

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@ecs707a Thanks for all updates on this kmovie  Any idea of any link to watch this movie online? Thanks. 

[ecs707a]

17 hours ago, jadecloud said:

@ecs707a Thanks for all updates on this kmovie  Any idea of any link to watch this movie online? Thanks. 

I'm not sure.  It was up on youtube for a while, at least, but I don't know if it's still there.  The subs aren't out yet, so it might not be on any of the usual streaming sites.  Sorry I can't be more helpful!

[zenya22]

On 4/29/2016 at 10:55 PM, ecs707a said:

I'm not sure.  It was up on youtube for a while, at least, but I don't know if it's still there.  The subs aren't out yet, so it might not be on any of the usual streaming sites.  Sorry I can't be more helpful!

Hey missed you in Monster. Anyway thank you for this thread on the movie. I have read good reviews about it and also reviews on Youtube were good. I have also looked at the trailers and the chemistry between PKW and HCA is sizzling. I will keep looking online to watch the movie. I love the 2 leads ... reminds me of Shunji and Rara ......