Great korean director Kim Ki-duk comes back to the Venice FF and to the scenes after explorating personal feelings in Arirang and Amen, in a story full of his typical themes, from human tragedies to disturbing scenes and moods, in the tragedy of modern capitalism where victims and hangmen are the same.

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 fi rst, 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 fi nally fi nds the one, only to discover most horrifi ng dark secrets better left unrevealed.

Director told: “Money inevitably puts people to the test in a capitalist society, and the people today are obsessed with a fantasy that money can solve anything. Money is the problem for most of the incidents that occur today. In this fi lm, two people who give and receive pain over money, unlikely to meet, comes across each other and become family. And through such family, we realize that we are accomplices to everything that occurs in our period. Money will ask sad questions until the people of this era die. Ultimately, we will end up becoming a money to each other and grind ourselves on an asphalt. I again cry out towards heaven with a meager faith today. God, have mercy on us”.

The Director told us more:
“It’s the tragedy of humans after and because of moderna capitalism. It’s about mercy but revenge too, there’s never only one element in my movies, I’m interested in showing feelings and emotions, and in this film also the power of money, not itself as horrible, but for the use we applicate in that, today!
In my movies I want to show the worst things because I think they need to be known to understand the right way, the safety one! Shots took place at the end of 2012 in a place really existing in Korea, where I worked when I was 15: it’ s a place full of history, I could define it as analogic, where we my protagonists have no roots, so they’re digital.”
Masterpiece full od little dark humour, cruelty, incest and mercy after all.

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