Winner, Jury Grand Prize, 2015
Against a harsh wintery backdrop in a remote mountain village, Alive tells the story of one man’s day to day struggle to survive at the margins of a hyper-modern Korea. A tour de force of the human spirit, Alive is written and directed by Park Jungbum who also stars as protagonist Jung-chul. Fired and unpaid for his work at a construction site and with his house destroyed by a recent flood, Jung-chul finds work in a soybean paste factory in Gangwon Province, near where his sister and niece live. They too are struggling, and like Jung-chul, their sole purpose is to eke out an existence. Jung-chul dreams of nothing more than building a secure, concrete home for his family.