Directed by Lee Chang-dong | Korea | 148 mins.

Please note: Tickets at the door are cash only.

Winner of the FIPRESCI prize at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, awarded by The International Federation of Film Critics to the film they deem to be the finest in competition, Burning marks a welcome return to the screen from Lee Chang-dong, one of the most lauded directors of his generation, eight years on from his last feature. Lee was a celebrated novelist for many years before trying his hand at the cinema, already a man in his forties; he was (some would say ironically) South Korea's Minister of Culture and Tourism from 2003 to 2004. He is known for carefully modulated melodramas that by virtue of their management of sustained tension take on certain characteristics of the slow-burning thriller. His work is unflinching, committed, critical. Burning, loosely adapting the 1983 Haruki Murakami story “Barn Burning,” presents a simmering love triangle and pyromaniacal acting out within the context of a corroding social fabric, specific to the South Korean experience but with indisputably global implications, informed by what Lee has described as his growing concern with “the rage of young people.” Many are calling it the best film of 2018.

- Written by Jason Wierzba