Cannes Festival Winner Chronicles Family"s Suicide

The Korean director Song Ilgon's film 'So-Poong', was the co-winner of the Cannes Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize in the Short Film category.
The paradoxical title 'So-Poong', which mean picnic in Korean, draws a bleak portrait of the effects of the economic crisis on Korean society. On a clear and sunny day, a dark tale slowly unfolds as a father, recently laid off, takes his wife and five-year-old son on a picnic.
The father stops the car at an idyllic spot on the seashore, because the mother anxiously wants to show her son the ocean for the first and what turns out to be the last time. After the mother and son take sleeping pills the father calmly connects a hose from the exhaust pipe into the car and gets in.
The director, who has made short films since 1993 and is studying film in Poland, said, 'I re-organized a real story I read in the newspaper. The gooseflesh violence that I felt while reading the article is still in my head. I wanted to express the violence of company layoffs in a controlled way with temperate emotions.'
'So-Poong' is the first Korean film to win at the Cannes Film Festival.

Jooan Kang : jooan@joongnang.co.kr