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Main Cast :
Old Monk (OH Young-soo)
Child Monk (KIM Jong-ho)
Boy Monk (SEO Jae-kyung)
Young Monk(KIM Young-min)

Production Company
LJ Film
Tel: +82-2-3444-4143
Fax: +82-2-3444-6858

International Sales
Cineclick Asia
3Fl., Incline Bldg., 891-37, Daechi-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Korea
Tel: +82-2-538-0211
Fax: +82-2-538-0479
Email: yjsuh@cineclickasia.com
Website: www.cineclickasia.com

Amercian Sales
Sony Pictures Classics

Prize / Award

Locarno Int'l Film Festival 2003
- Junior Jury Prize, Don Quixote Prize, CICAE / ARTE Prize, NETPAC Prize

San Sebastian Int'l Film Festival 2003
- Pearl of the Audience Award

Cinema Horizons Int'l Festival "KYPRIA 2003" - Public Award

Director KIM Ki-duk meets the Eastern world of Zen

A child monk who audaciously stacks rocks on frog's back; a young boy who falls in love with a girl who came to the monastery to convalesce; a young man who returns as a murderer; a man training in the art of Zen in the chilly winter mountain; and old monk who raises a child; and then returning to the story of a child monk. With the dreamlike background of a monastery that stands in a forest on a pond, panoramic portraits of life flow in accordance with the four seasons.

Spring - Child Monk : Innocence in the grotesque

A child monk bursts out in a laughter when he watches a pitiful sight of a captured fish struggling with a stone tied to its back. Same plight awaits a frog and a snake. The child monk roams the brook in search of the fish and the frog with a rock tied to his back as his punishment allotted by the old monk.

Summer - Boy Monk : First Love

The boy monk has grown into an open hearted 17 year-old. To the lonely hermitage where the boy and an old monk live, a girl the boy's age comes to convalesce. Before long, warm feelings towards the girl sprouts in the boy's heart. Their ripple in the water turns into an act of love.

Fall - A Young Monk : Commits Murder

The boy returns to the hermitage in the mountains as a young man in his thirties. The old monk whips him without mercy when the young man attempts suicide in front of the statue of Buddha, unable to overcome his carnal desires. It is finally in etching the words of the old monk's copy of the Pranja-parpamitasutra in his heart that the young man finds peace.

Winter - A Monk in Maturity : Days of Enlightenment

The monk, now in his full maturity retraces his steps to the abandoned hermitage in the mountains. He submits to rigorous training in the icy winter for self-cultivation and makes paper from mulberry trees as if the act is a part of his ascetic program. A nameless woman in the last stages of her pregnancy visits the snow-covered hermitage.

And then spring - a New child Monk : Samsara

The old monk converses with nature as well as the innocent child monk by his side. When time comes, he conducts his own cremation ceremony by piling logs. Yet another child monk plays by the brook by tossing the old monk's remains into the water.

Director : KIM Ki-duk

I intend to portray the joy, anger, sorrow and pleasure of our lives through four seasons and through the life of a monk who lives in a temple surrounded only by nature on Jusan Pond. Five stories of Child Monk, Boy Monk, Adult Monk, Elderly Monk, and old Monk will coexist with images of each season. The changing qualities in living human beings, the meaning of maturity in our lives that are formed and how they develop, the cruelty of innocence, the obsession in desires, the pain in murderous intentions, and the emancipation in struggles… (Director's Note)

- Born in 1960
- Studied Fine art in France from 1990~1992

[FILMOGRAPHY]

1996 "The Crocodile" Featrure Debut, Director / Screenplay
1997 "Wild Animal" Director / Screenplay 1998 "Birdcage Inn" Director / Screenplay
1999 "The Isle" Director / Screenplay 2000 "Real Fiction" Director / Screenplay
2001 "Address Unknown" Director / Screenplay 2002 "Bad Guy" Director / Screenplay
2002 "The Coast guard" Director
2003 "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring" Director / Screenplay

[수상경력]

1993년 영상작가 교육원 제3회 창작상 대상 수상-<화가와 사형수>
1994년 영화진흥공사 '94 하반기 시나리오 공모' 장려상-<이중노출>
1995년 영화진흥공사 '95 상반기 시나리오 공모' 대상-<무단횡단>