Dae gi eui wang (The King of Pigs)

Dae gi eui wang (The King of Pigs), Yeon Sang-ho, 2011, South Korea, 97', OV with Spanish subtitles

The first and powerful feature length film of one of the names involved in animation and genre films: last year, the San Sebastian Horror and Fantasy Film Festival scheduled the freneticTrain to Busan (2016), an action packed film where zombies get on a train with an uncertain destination. The result, one of the films of the year and an audience award during the horror week. Later, in Tabakalera and in the context of Komikilabea, we scheduled Train to Busan (2016), where director Yeon Sang-ho, faithful to the animated image, offered a first chapter with his particular vision of the zombie imaginary. After a year –2016– full of praise for the director, both by the public and by critics, we are using the occasion of our cycle of imaginaries of youth to bring back his first feature-length film, presented in 2012 at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes.

In The King of Pigs we already have all the director’s signature styles: intensity, violence and a great capacity for narration and for the creation of visual imagery. The film focuses on the memories of two main characters of when they were at school: Kyung-min is a businessman, and Jong-suk is a writer going through a bad period. And their meeting takes them back to the big question they did not dare to answer all these years: What actually happened to their schoolmate Kim Chul? The result, a study on bullying at school and adolescent fears that only this director is capable of offering. Without concessions.