‘Birthday’ invited to film fest in Italy

“Birthday,” a movie that revolves around the aftermath of the Sewol ferry disaster in 2014, has been invited to compete and screen as the opening film at the 21st Udine Far East Film Festival (FEFF), which will be held from April 26 to May 4 at Udine, Italy.

FEFF is considered one of the biggest annual Asian film festivals in Europe, inviting films from Korea, China and Japan.

Sabrina Baracetti, the FEFF’s president, said, “In order to recount the dynamics of a family that lost its eldest son on the Sewol, Lee Jong-eon constructs an uncompromising narrative: suffering speaks the language of petit-bourgeois everyday life, of normality without normality, and has no room for facile cinematographic manipulation.”

Starring actors Jeon Do-yeon and Sul Kyung-gu and directed by Lee Jong-eon, the movie tells the emotional story of a middle-aged couple, Sun-nam (Jeon) and Jeong-il (Sul) who lose their high school son, Su-ho, in the 2014 tragedy, in which a ferry heading toward Jeju Island capsized, taking the lives of 304 people on board, mostly high school students. The movie is set to hit Korean theaters on April 3.

By Yeo Ye-rim