Box Office: Han Gong-ju, Stories We Tell, Moster

Han Gong-ju (Korea)

Opening April 17

Drama. Directed by Lee Su-jin.

Han Gong-ju is a 17-year-old girl who starts a new life in a new school, leaving everything behind in her hometown. She makes new friends and begins to sing again, which she gave up after going through a traumatic event in the past. But everything changes when the parents of her old classmates visit Gong-ju out of the blue. The debut feature by director Lee Su-jin won numerous awards from international film festivals, including Rotterdam and Marrakech.

Stories We Tell (Canada)

Opened March 14

Documentary. Directed by Sarah Polley

Canadian filmmaker Sarah Polley discovered in 2007, at age 28, that her father was not her biological father and that she was the result of an extramarital affair. Her personal documentary “Stories We Tell” follows her shocking discovery and family secrets, consisting of interviews with her siblings from her mother’s two marriages, as well as Michael Polley, the man who raised her, and her biological father Harry Gulkin.

Monster (Korea)

Opened March 13

Thriller. Directed by Hwang In-ho

Bok-soon (Kim Go-eun), a young woman who lives with her younger sibling, has a developmental disability. She almost becomes psychotic when her sister is murdered by ruthless killer Tae-soo (Lee Min-ki). With uncontrollable anger, madness and limited mental ability, Bok-soon plans revenge against the killer. 

Elegant Lies (Korea)

Opened March 13

Drama. Directed by Lee Han.

Hyeon-sook (Kim Hee-ae) is a single mother raising two teenage daughters while working at a big grocery store. One day, her youngest child Cheon-ji (Kim Hyang-gi) suddenly commits suicide without even leaving a note. Struggling with guilt and anger, and not knowing why Cheon-ji chose to kill herself, Hyeon-sook and her eldest daughter Man-ji (Ko Ah-sung) wonder whether there was something they missed or something they could have said or done.

12 Years a Slave (U.S., U.K.)

Opened Feb. 27

Drama. Directed by Steve McQueen.

In 1841, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free African-American New Yorker, is kidnapped by slavers in Washington, D.C., and sold into slavery in Louisiana. There, he is enslaved to work on farms in the South, after being renamed “Platt,” and becomes the property of a plantation owner (Benedict Cumberbatch). This film is an adaptation of the 1853 memoir of the same title by Northup, who was an educated carpenter, musician and family man before he was abducted.