Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2018: #65. Kim Ki-duk’s Human, Space, Time and Human

Human, Space, Time and Human

Perennial South Korean auteur Kim Ki-duk is back with his twenty-first narrative feature Human, Space, Time and Human, which concerns a group of people who wake up on a battleship no longer floating on water. The premise, which sounds like a claustrophobic version of Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944) will be used as a metaphor to explore incongruences of human nature. Ki-duk claims he made the film in order to stop hating humans. Although Ki-duk has seemed to be more prolific than ever since debuting his only documentary, Arirang (2010), which profiled his breakdown after an accident on the set of his previous film (the experience netted him an award out of the Un Certain Regard program at Cannes), he tends to veer between the bizarre and the extreme (as evidenced by his 2012 Golden Lion Winner Pieta and the outrageously perverse Moebius in 2013) and schmaltzy, heavy-handed melodrama (2016’s The Net). His latest sounds to be on the more grueling side of things, though we hope in a return to his more provocative proclivities, such as 2006’s Time. Ahn Sung-ki , Ryoo Seung-bum, Lee Sung-jae and Jang Keun-suk star.

Release Date/Prediction: Ki-duk has been featured in nearly every significant film festival’s competition, including Cannes (Breathe, 2006), Berlin (Bad Guy, 2001; Samaritan Girl, 2004, which took home Best Director), Locarno (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…Spring, 2003), and Venice (competing four times with The Isle, 2000; Address Unknown, 2001; 3 Iron, 2004, which won the Silver Lion, and then 2012’s Golden Lion Winning Pieta). Although Venice is Ki-duk’s favored venue (2016’s The Net also bowed here, albeit in a sidebar), Human, Space, Time and Human is currently in post-production suggesting he’ll appear in Berlin or at Cannes, potentially for his third stint in Un Certain Regard.