The Centro Cultural Coreano announces the 16th edition of the Korean Film Festival in Madrid, which will take place on October 17 and 18 at the Cine Capitol (Gran Vía, 41).
Under the motto “The Strange”, this festival promises a unique experience with a careful selection of suspense films, thrillers and supernatural elements, exploring the darkest and most mystical depths of Korean culture, with a special focus on shamanism. Admission is free until capacity is full and no prior reservation is required.
The festival presents a program of four featured feature films from contemporary Korean cinema, exploring mystery and the supernatural, Exhuma (2024), by director Jang Jae-hyun; Parasites: Black and White Version (2019), by director Bong Joon-ho; The Stranger (2016), by director Na Hong-jin, and Burning (2018), by director Lee Chang-dong.
This edition of the festival places special emphasis on Korean shamanism, or musok, an ancestral spiritual practice that continues to influence South Korean culture and cinema. According to anthropologist Laurel Kendall, “The question is not ‘do you think?’ but ‘does it work? ‘”, underlining the impact and relevance of this living tradition. In the films Exhuma and The Stranger, the mudang (shamans) appear as intermediaries between the human world and the spiritual one, a concept deeply rooted in Korean culture and showing how these ancestral beliefs continue to shape film narrative.
The festival not only showcases Korean cinema, but also offers a window to shamanism as a crucial expression of Korean spirituality, which persists in everyday life and art even in the modern era.
Before each feature film, three short films will be screened as winners of the 2nd CCCE 2024 Short Films Competition, highlighting emerging talent in Spanish cinema: Kimchi, directed by Héctor Jenz; Alba y Jun, director Manuel Palenzuela León, and Son of Someone – Part I, directed by Rodrigo Alonso Cuevas.
