An exemplary officer worker and head of his family Kim Byung-guk murdered his entire family and disappeared into thin air. Homicide detective Jong-hoon immediately begins his investigation at Kim’s office but all of his colleagues seem to be hiding something. He realises that Kim and an intern named Mirae were close and suspects something out of the ordinary. During his investigation, Jong-hoon obtains a CCTV footage of Kim entering the office parking lot immediately following the murder of his family but he was never seen exiting.
The taut thriller by South Korean filmmaker Hong Won-chan uses the serial killer metaphor to expose the dark side of the cut-throat workplace competition.
"In Korean society, one’s job is so closely tied to one’s survival, and when one falls behind in the game of competition, he is overcome with despair that is beyond the scope of stress. It is a social system in which ‘working’ is ‘survival’ and ‘dismissal’ is ‘death’. This is the biggest contradiction that lies within Korean society today. You cannot simply ignore the connection between this and Korea’s suicide rate, which is one of the highest in the world." (Hong Won-chan)
Hong Won-chan
Born in 1979 in Changwon, South Korea. After graduating from the Korean National University of Arts, Won-Chan Hong wrote screenplays for The Chaser (2008) and The Yellow Sea (2010), both of which screened at the Cannes Film Festival. With his feature debut, Office, which displays his passion for genre cinema, he entered the Cannes Film Festival’s official selection as director.
filmography
2015 O piseu (Office)