Sokurov’s “Fairy Tale” will be seen in South Korea and Japan

Sokurov replenished the South Korean iconostasis

The Russian-Belgian film “Fairy Tale” by Alexander Sokurov is participating in the 27th Busan (Busan) Film Festival, which is taking place these days in South Korea – the largest in Asia. This is a fantastic story about the Second World War and those who determined the fate of the world – Stalin, Mussolini, Churchill, Hitler. But none of the authors will be able to present the film. Next, “Fairy Tale” will have a way to the 35th Tokyo International Film Festival.

“Fairy Tale” is an independent project filmed in co-production with Belgium. The film is based on archival material, often unknown. In Tokyo, it was included in the program of the gala premiere, in Busan – in Icon, where icons of world cinema, regular participants in Cannes and Venice are presented – Claire Denis, Jafar Panahi, David Cronnenberg, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Briante Mendoza, Lav Diaz, Jerzy Skolimovsky , Park Chan-wook.

Sokurov refused to participate in the Cannes Film Festival, being sure that his complex film would not be understood there. In addition, they did not take the painting “The Bird is Looking for a Cage” shot in the Chechen Republic by his student Malika Musaeva, which he highly appreciates. Sokurov is perhaps the only director of ours who is not subject to the so-called policy of abolishing Russian culture. He was welcomed in Locarno, Switzerland, awaited in Asia. He will not come to Busan, but whether he will visit Japan, with which he is connected by several joint film projects, is still unknown.

As the Busan festival selector told MK, there is no boycott in South Korea, and the absence of other Russian films is explained by the fact that nothing suitable was found. The documentary film “How to Save My Dead Friend” by Marina Razbezhkina’s student Marusya Syroechkovskaya, produced by Sweden, Norway, France and Germany, will also be shown. It is also based on a chronicle that has been running for more than ten years and tells about the director’s drug-addicted friend, whom Marusya has known since she was 16. The friend passed away in 2016. The cause of early death is drugs and depression.

South Korean director Park Chang-uk, who entered the “iconostasis” of the Busan festival and has long occupied it in Cannes, is represented by the film “The Decision to Leave”. She closed the recent Moscow Film Festival and will now be shown at home. Park Chan-wook is known for his “Oldboy”, which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. For six years he did not shoot anything and now he has made a film, technically a thriller, but to call it that is to say nothing. The main character (played by the brilliant Park Hae-il) investigates an incident in the mountains where an immigration officer died. His young wife, a Chinese woman – her grandfather was a general in the Korean Liberation Army (in South Korea, everything connected with this is an unhealed wound, there is a small museum of the history of the Korean War in Busan, and a film about those tragic events will be shown in the festival program), leads yourself strange. The death of her husband does not sadden her. Tang Wei, who we know from the film “Lust” by Ang Lee, where Park Chan-wook drew attention to her and invited her to his film, is unusually good. And there is nothing surprising in the fact that the investigator begins to feel attracted to the suspect. It would seem like some kind of hackneyed story, but how unbanally it was invented. The mystery of the main character until the end will not be revealed. Is she an angel or a demon? Chang-uk knows how to create non-trivial female images. He had a painting called “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance”, which can be paraphrased using the word “death”, and this title would suit the “Decision to Leave”.

Korea is an incredibly cinematic country. On the screen, her landscapes are sometimes even more impressive than in reality. Like Sokurov’s film, although formally they have nothing in common, the nature of man and how far he can go and turn the world of others are explored here. It doesn’t matter if they are the powers that be or ordinary people. They are united by the eternal question “Who is to blame?”

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 28885 dated October 7, 2022

Newspaper headline:
Sokurov has become a South Korean “icon”