Novelist turned film director LEE Chang-dong will visit the Cannes film festival with his fifth movie Poetry. With Secret Sunshine’s invitation to the Cannes’ competition section 3 years ago, he had presented an epic of self-salvation and pain caused by mundane life. This time, he has returned with a piece that studies meaning of poetry through a woman in her 60s, who tries writing poems for the first time.

Films by Korea's best-known auteurs tend to come in bunches. Specifically, in May: the publicity and fame associated with a premiere at the Cannes Film Festival has created a somewhat skewed production schedule whereby all the year's highest-profile films emrge in early spring. This year is no exception: Cannes presents new films by LEE Chang-dong (Poetry, screening in competition), IM Sang-soo (The Housemaid, also in competition) and HONG Sangsoo (Hahaha, in Un Certain Regard).

“You won’t be able to imagine now. Back then, I couldn’t leave the house. High school girls would chase after me screaming and there even was a person who sent me a letter written in blood.” This is how a legendary actress of an era, YUN Jung-hee, reflects her heyday of 1960~70s. In a time when internet didn’t exist and even TV was rare, it was literature and movie that were responsible for cultural sentiments of the Koreans.