A South Korean political thriller opened the Singapore International Film Festival two weeks after Korea's conservative opposition asked it to be pul—
The opposition People Power Party's Oct. 6 letter went to festival executive director Jeremy Chua on behalf of all 109 of its lawmakers, asking SGIFF to reverse the selection.
The festival kept the film. In an Oct. 7 statement it said the selection had come through SGIFF's independent curatorial process, for its artistic merit and its contribution to contemporary Asian cinema.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
Festival chair Boo Junfeng told the opening-night audience that the team had been flooded with messages from a group in South Korea pressing it to cancel the screening, and had also received many notes of support. He thanked Hur and his team for making the trip despite the pressures back at home. The pressure was not unanimous, which is what makes the festival's decision look less like stubbornness and more like judgment.
Keep straight what the festival actually argued: it said it had carefully considered the various arguments, sees the film as an artistic interpretation of historical events, and respects the makers' creative vision. That is a defense of a particular kind of filmmaking as much as of free expression — the claim is not only that the festival may show the film, but that the film is interpreting rather than testifying.