Asian Drama

A song for my dear is a film with a similar story to The memory of you in the Korean Cinema section. The husband is teaching Korean traditional music at a university with his talent inherited from his parents, pansori singer father and Gokbi—professional wailer at the funeral—mother. His ordinary days come to a halt when his wife begins to show some strange behaviors. Diagnosed with dementia, her condition gets worse fast and he takes care of her before anything else, but he also gets weak and old. In this film, his despair is expressed with Chang (Korean opera), and the more the wife gets ill, the more heartbroken songs become.

Do Il Chool is a poor college student who is talented in playing poker. One day, he meets a woman nicknamed Madonna, who was with a mysterious gambler. Il Chool borrows money from loan sharks and plays against the man, where he losses and lands in debt. Weeks later, Il Chool is haunted by loan sharks when he meets Ae Kku, a famous gambler nicknames the One-Eyed Jack, who forms a team with Il Chool and other notorious swindlers to get revenge and win 5 million dollars by gambling against Old Man Mool.

Since her parents died, In Ae and her younger sister Eun Hye have lived together by themselves. The two sisters rely on each other, but, one day, Eun Hye disappears. Older sister In Ae struggles to find Eun Hye and seeks to take revenge on those responsible for her sisters disappearance.

In 1999, Korea makes its first women’s ice hockey team for the purpose of hosting the Asian Winter Games in Gangwondo. A former junior ice hockey player is appointed as the coach to lead a team of an ex-ice hockey player, an expelled ice skater, a housewife who’s bored with life, an accounting clerk at the Ice Hockey Association, an ex-figure skater, and an ambitious girl aspiring to be the youngest Olympian. Putting their differences aside, the diverse group embarks on the long journey for a chance to compete in the 5th Asian Winter Games in Aomori, Japan.

Seok Woo, his estranged daughter Soo An, and other passengers become trapped on a KTX train (high-speed train) heading from Seoul to Busan during a disastrous virus outbreak in South Korea.

What does it take to form a women’s Olympic national ice hockey team? A few middle-aged women, a middle school student, and maybe even a North Korean defector? Kang Dae Woong is tasked with pulling together a women’s national ice hockey team in the hopes representing South Korea in the Winter Olympics. What he is able to assemble is a hodgepodge group of women -- Lee Ji Won, Park Chae Kyung, Go Young Ja, Jo Mi Ran, Kim Ga Yeon, and Shin So Hyun -- who can barely skate, let alone strike a hockey puck. Can this lackluster group form a team to even dream of making it to the Olympics?

“Ode To My Father” is the story of Deok Su, a completely ordinary man, who in the face of tumultuous events, marshals the extraordinary courage to protect his family. Sticking together they survive some of modern history’s most significant events. As a child, Deok Su had to say goodbye to his father during a North Korean refugee evacuation amidst the Korean War. His last words to his father were a promise that he would always protect the family. As he matures, that vow leads him to the coal mines of 1960’s Germany, and even into the jungle of the Vietnam War. ‘Ode To My Father’ is a heartwarming tale of a regular man who musters superhuman resilience for the sake of his family, all set in the maelstrom of modern history as it crashed over Korea. With echoes of tumultuous events happening around the globe today, ‘Ode To My Father’ is a loving look at one family who manages to survive and even thrive.