Lee Jung-eun, Gong Hyo-jin, Park So-dam lead family revenge film 'Gyeongju Giyaeng', opening Aug 26

Gyeongju Giyaeng opens August 26. The cast alone makes it worth watching.

Lee Jung-eun, Gong Hyo-jin, Park So-dam, and Lee Yeon play four sisters—mothers and daughters—who leave on a revenge trip after eight years waiting for their youngest sibling Gyeongju, who vanished during a school excursion. Byun Yo-han takes a special role as an extremely vicious murderer.

Director Kim Mi-jo held a press screening and conference on August 13 at Lotte Cinema World Tower in Songpa-gu, Seoul. This was her first major commercial film. Her previous work is the independent film Seagull (갈매기).

She was candid about her tonal choices. "This film didn't have a large budget, and the format is drama, so I directed it that way," she said. Her long-term goal is to make films like Mad Max. After watching The Odyssey, she wants to make something like that too.

The revenge-drama genre shaped what she wanted to explore. "Killing a person can never be easy," she said at the press conference. "Our film is an inefficient revenge carried out together as a family, so it was important to deal with personal stories." She described the mother character Oksil as someone who works through loss and keeps making choices until the very end.

The personal angle runs deep. Kim Mi-jo is herself the youngest of four sisters, and she drew on watching her mother and older sisters. "I wanted to make a movie with the story I'm most confident about."

(Four actresses, one murderer, and a director who grew up in exactly this family dynamic—the casting math here is not accidental.)

Gyeongju Giyaeng opens August 26.