Thrist sees Sang-hyun – a priest who volunteers his time conducting his ministry to patients in a small town hospital. Although well respected for his strong faith and dedicated service to those around him, he suffers from overwhelming feelings of doubt and despair about living in a world that seems to be drowning in suffering and death. With the hope of saving even one life, he volunteers to participate in an experiment to find a vaccine for a deadly virus and heads to Africa. But the experiment fails, and Sang-hyun is infected with the fatal disease. Surprisingly, however, he recovers completely. News of his miraculous recovery spreads quickly, and devoted parishioners, thinking that he has the gift of healing, flock to his services. Suddenly, Sang-hyun relapses. He coughs up blood and dies, only to open his eyes the next day in dire need of shelter from the scorching sunlight…”
Twilight made vampires cool again (at least for a certain demo), but I’m not sure what’s in store for something in a foreign tongue and from Oldboy director Park Chan-Wook – if the buzz was larger than life we would have already heard about it from its world premiere which recently took place. I wouldn’t be surprised if an indie distributor who normally doesn’t go with “fringe” stuff makes a best offer for the U.S. rights. Update: if I would have researched this a bit more I would have noticed that Focus Features was on board early on. Focus is releasing this in July.
Other “top” contenders for a possible pick up include: Jacques Audiard ‘s A Prophet, Robert Guédiguian’s The Army of Crime and Vincent Patar and Stéphane Aubier’s A Town Called Panic with eventual reconfigured English speaking voices.
