By Park Soo-mee (The Hollywood Reporter)
September 6, 2010, 07:49 AM ET SEOUL – “A Barefoot Dream” by the director Kim Tae-kyun will compete in 83rd Academy Awards' Best Foreign Language Film category, set for February 27, 2011, at the Kodak Theatre.
The film tells the true story of a former Korean football star who establishes a new life for himself in East Timor when he begins coaching the impoverished Timorese national soccer team.
It was released in Korea on 24 June as a piece of programming complementary to the then ongoing World Cup football tournament. Overseas it is handled by Showbox.
The film, which was selected out of six contenders, is based on a true story is about a South Korean football coach who leads a youth team in East Timor.
Other contenders were Im Sang-soo’s “The Housemaid”; Lee Chang-dong’s “Poetry"; Lee Jae-han’s “71-Into the Fire"; Lee Joon-ik’s “Like the Moon Escaping from the Clouds”; and Jeon Yong-taek’s “Potato Symphony.”
“Given that the film will compete with 60 other films from all over the world, the juries decided that the Korean entry must be a film that the Oscar committee members could appreciate without knowing the Korean context,” the jury statement read. “The juries carefully juggled between ‘Barefoot’ and ‘Poetry’ until the last minute, and while they unanimously agreed that ‘Poetry is an outstanding work, they came to a conclusion that the film was too long and could easily lose the audiences' concentration."
Director KIM previously carried Korea’s Oscar flame with the film "Crossing"
No Korean film has ever been a finalist in the Best Foreign Language Film category. |
