Take Care of My Cat

A sleeper hit at the time of its release, Jeong Jae-eun’s perceptive debut chronicles the lives of five graduating friends whose bonds begin to fracture as they contend with a postgrad reality of squashed dreams and unequal opportunities. Jeong sets the lives of her protagonists (including Bae Doona in a breakout role) against the industrial backdrop of Incheon, a port city bearing the brunt of South Korea’s ruthless globalization – in what is now a timeless snapshot of a rapidly evolving society. Alternately bleakly realistic and effortlessly cool, suffused with the joys of girlhood yet clear-eyed about the uneasy transition to adulthood, Take Care of My Cat offers a tender, multi-faceted portrait of young women at the turn of the new millennium.

Preceded by Influenza (dir. Bong Joon-ho, 2004, 30 mins), a startling short film from the Academy Award-winning director of Parasite.