Bong Joon-ho made history with Parasite, the first Korean Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, which a few months later became the first non-English language film to win the prestigious Oscar for Best Picture. For many, this dark comedy put South Korean cinema on the map, but its director was already highly regarded by many film enthusiasts, including Quentin Tarantino, who included one of his previous works in his Top 20 of all time. The film that captivated the American filmmaker is Memories of Murder, a 2003 production that was chosen as the best Korean film of the century for its "portrayal of Korean society using the Hwaseong serial murder case as a motif, blending the era and the people in the crucible of the thriller with unprecedented perfection". The British magazine Sight & Sound also included it in their list of "30 key films that defined the 2000s".

What is it about

South Korea, 1986. A young woman is brutally raped and murdered. Two months later, a series of rapes and murders occur under similar circumstances. To find the killer, a special task force is formed, led by a local police detective (Park Doo-man) and a Seoul police detective (Seo Tae-yoon), who requested to be assigned to the case.

Based on a true case

A cult classic

Within a year of its release, Memories of Murder was already considered a cult film in cinephile and festival circuits. Later in the same decade, it was praised by numerous international publications, referring to it as one of the best police films of the 21st century and one of the best Korean films of all time. Among its virtues, it stands out the mix of police genre with social satire and the desperation and frustration of its characters. Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian reviewed it as "a great satire of official laxity and arrogance, and its final scene is very chilling". On the other hand, Derek Elley from Variety described the film as "a powerful and slow-burning portrait of human fallibility".