Official selection
Busan International Film Festival 2021
Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2022
Honors
Contrechamp Jury Distinction, Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2022
Director
Hong Jun-pyo
Producer
Kim Sun-ku
Writer
Sim Hyeong-seop
Cast
Jang Dong-yoon, Yeom Hye-ran, Jin Seon-kyu
Composer
Lee Ji-soo
contact
Finecut Co., Ltd.
Life is a constant struggle for the Chun family in 1960s South Korea. Though young Tae-Il has acquired tailoring skills from his bitter, alcoholic father, the bright and motivated lad is also denied a proper education. Beset by poverty, any paying work must take precedence. The family relocates to Seoul is the forlorn hope that their fortunes might improve. There too, the worker’s lot is a miserable one, as Tae-Il discovers when he takes a job in Peace Market, a notorious cluster of sweatshops. Workloads are too great, wages too low, conditions severely unhealthy. Labour laws exist in principle, but not in practice. Bonding with his co-workers and earning their admiration, Tae-Il delves into the law books and spreads the word, but his efforts are in vain. As a new decade dawns, Chun Tae-Il is driven to make a much greater sacrifice for workers’ rights.
The story of Chun Tae-Il (or Jeon, in some spellings of his family name) is one that still reverberates after half a century. Already explored in literature, comics, and documentary film, Chun’s noble efforts and tragic death at age 22 continue to inspire. A beacon of light even today, when wealth disparity and wage stagnation undo the tenuous gains of recent decades, his actions ignited the labour movement in South Korea. Produced by Myung Films, whose LEAFIE: A HEN INTO THE WILD (2011) broke box-office records for local animation in South Korea, CHUN TAE-IL: A FLAME THAT LIVES ON honours its subject with emotionally charged storytelling and splendid visual craft—much of it at the hands of alumni of KIAFA, the country’s independent animation association which Fantasia is proud to spotlight at our 2022 edition. – Rupert Bottenberg
Showings
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Yaya e Lennie – The Walking Liberty
Alessandro Rak
Born at the end of the world, two wily orphaned teens fight to stay free in this exciting, animated eco-punk adventure.
My Grandfather's Demons
Nuno Beato
Portugal’s first stop-motion feature is an engrossing drama about how roots can both nourish and entangle, told with a luminous sense of the magical.
Goodbye, Don Glees!
Atsuko Ishizuka
What regrets would you have if the world ended tomorrow? A memorable, bittersweet coming-of-age anime with a hint of the fantastic.