Wed, Sept 22
After The Housemaid screening, 6:30PM
At MoMA

This year's festival kicks off with the highly anticipated film The Housemaid, with Director Im Sang-Soo in attendance.

Director Im will remain after the screening to engage in a Q&A with the audience.

Im Sang-Soo has established himself as one of Korea's most innovative, daring and controversial directors. Im studied sociology at Seoul's Yonsei University before enrolling at The Korean Academy of Film Arts in 1989. He began working in film that same year, as assistant director to Park Jeong-won and then Kim Young-bin. In 1995 Im wrote the screenplay for The Eternal Empire, and also A Noteworthy Film, which won the Creation Prix at the Korean Motion Picture Promotion Scenario Competition.

Im's directorial debut came in 1998 with Girls' Night Out, a movie deemed controversial for the frank and sexually driven dialogue of the film's main characters, three women living in Seoul. Next was Tears, a drama centering around the lives of four runaway teenagers. Im spent five months in the Garibong-dong district of Seoul amongst homeless runaway teens before writing the script, and opted to use non-actors. Im's third film, A Good Lawyers Wife, a mature and convincing drama on the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie, was a huge box office success. Topping Korean box offices for weeks, the film was invited to the Venice Film Festival.

The President's Last Bang , a depiction of President Park Chung-hee's assassination in 1979, had its international premiere at Cannes' Directors Fortnight.  Perhaps Im's most controversial film, it nevertheless garnered international acclaim as well as finding a solid Korean audience.

With The Housemaid, Im solidifies his status as one of Korea's top directors. Charting the affair between an extremely wealthy man and the young maid hired to take care of his pregnant wife, the film is a remake of the 1960 Korean film of the same name.