Green Fish

Director: Lee Chang-dong

1997 / 111min

Already established as a novelist and playwright, Lee made the leap to the director’s chair with this spectacularly assured first feagrture, a scourging commentary on South Korean society dressed up in film noir trappings, focused on a freshly demobbed young man (Han Suk-gyu) who, after throwing in his lot with the local mob, finds himself in hot water when he starts an affair with his boss’s girlfriend. One of the more auspicious debuts in the history of South Korean cinema and a hit with audiences and critics alike, with Han’s improvised telephone booth monologue having achieved nothing less than iconic stature.