Awards and festivals

Film description

Jung-woo, a shy art student with a dream to become webtoonist, is seceretly fascinated by one girl in his group, Ju-hee - beautiful and talented, but equally unattainable and withdrawn from the school life. She aims to pursue her studies in France and does not make friends with anyone at the university. One day Jung-woo while working part-time finds out about Ju-hee's secret and the girl begs him not to reveal it. They form a pact which allows them to know each other a bit more. The situation gets more complicated and full of tension as every character has it's own agency and the secret cannot remain hidden for long. 

"The Senior Class" is a classic melodrama set in contemporary South Korean society. Director Hong Deok-pyo uses genre cinema to reflect on the social phenomenons, especially the relationships between men and women. Through applying the conventions of the melodrama he emphasizes the conflict to the extreme, trying to encompass the irrationality of twisted dynamics and widespread misogyny in South Korea. None of the characters is without a fault, false informations, assumptions, desires bring them down into an unsolvable situation. This makes "The Senior Class" a film that generates discussions as the way it is received can extremely differ, the line between imagination and real facts is very thin and actual story is mainly a matter of point of view.

Maja Korbecka