Interview'Korean cinema's crisis is invisible from NY' says US film fest chief
Samuel Jamier, executive director of the New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) / Captured from his Instagram
"From New York, and the U.S. in general, the drought is almost invisible," Samuel Jamier, the executive director of the New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) said, challenging the prevailing anxiety surrounding the future of Korean cinema.
"Film, television and K-pop blur into a single triumphant category — Korean content — and its sheer popularity overshadows the predicament of the industry that produces it."
In a recent email interview with The Korea Times, the executive director offered a refreshing global perspective on Korea’s pop culture scene, arguing that while structural bottlenecks are very real in Seoul, the global appetite for Korean storytelling remains as fierce as ever.
His insights come as NYAFF kicks off its landmark 25th anniversary edition, running from Friday (local time) to July 26 in New York, featuring a massive Korean cinema spotlight co-hosted by the Korean Cultural Center New York and the nonprofit Film at Lincoln Center. Supported by the Korean Film Council, this year's festival is screening 23 Korean movies across five venues.
Opening the festival on Friday is the 2026 zombie action thriller "Colony" directed by Yeon Sang-ho, who is attending the festival with star Jun Ji-hyun in order to meet with local audiences.
"Commercial was never a dirty word at this festival," Jamier said, explaining the selection of high-profile titles for the anniversary program.
"NYAFF started in 2002 by screening the kind of popular Asian cinema American art houses weren’t interested in, wouldn’t book or just didn’t know existed. In that sense, this year’s record-breaking Korean films absolutely belong in the 25th edition."
Jamier pointed out that "Colony" perfectly fits the festival, which prioritizes accessible and coherent storytelling.
"'Colony' makes its infected zombies a new species, choreographed, kinetically strange, yet still part and parcel of the zombie picture genre," Jamier said. "An opening night, in my view, needs a film that goes off in a crowd."
The festival is also screening the historical drama "The King's Warden,” which recently became the highest-grossing Korean film of all time by revenue, as well as Na Hong-jin’s thriller "Hope" as the Centerpiece selection.
"’The King's Warden' is the kind of movie Koreans actually go to theaters to watch, a period drama running on sentiment and a populist tenderness for ordinary people," Jamier wrote. "We want to show what Koreans connect with at home. Independently of that, as a story, it’s simply resonant for almost any audience around the world, Americans included."
Universal grief, local history
Beyond the mainstream blockbusters, this year’s spotlight shines heavily on two films dealing with the historical trauma of the Jeju April 3 Incident — Ha Myung-mi’s "Hallan" and Chung Ji-young’s "My Name."
A poster for New York Asian Film Festival’s (NYAFF) special exhibition introducing Korea’s the Jeju April 3 Incident / Courtesy of NYAFF
To complement these North American premieres, the festival is hosting a special exhibition titled “Jeju 4.3: A Journey from Tragedy to Truth and Reconciliation” at the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery from July 12 to 16, with both directors attending audience Q&A sessions.
When asked how international audiences might react to such deeply localized, politically charged themes, Jamier expressed complete confidence.
"Realistically, much or most of our audience will hear about Jeju 4.3 for the first time, but that’s precisely what our festival is for. We aren’t presenting 'Hallan' and 'My Name' in a didactic way, as homework, or to teach some moral or history lesson," Jamier explained.
“'Hallan' is first and foremost, to us, an extraordinarily moving period drama that stays intimate inside the historical and political tragedy. It’s about a mother searching for her child in the middle of the massacre. Considering what’s happening in the world, it doesn’t take a big stretch of the imagination to go beyond the historical specifics and understand what’s at stake in the film."
Actor Jun Ji-hyun in a scene from “Colony,” an opening film for the 25th New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) / Captured from NYAFF
Seoul’s fear vs. New York’s reality
According to Jamier, people overseas do not really see the "creative drought" that Seoul critics worry about because Korean content has already become a permanent part of American pop culture.
He pointed out that while industry insiders diagnose creative exhaustion, "Colony" sold out its opening night in New York in under five minutes, and Na's "Hope" did the same within a day.
However, Jamier did not shy away from the industry's real structural vulnerabilities, specifically pointing out the decline of the mid-budget film tier where past masters used to build their careers.
"What I see in the last decade of submissions is Koreans imitating Koreans, the industry recycling its own hits," Jamier wrote.
"A genre works once, a comedy, a class parable let’s say, and the copies pile up until they play like self-parody. The same high-concept thriller can be produced and released several times a year. Korea adopted the tentpole system wholesale, an entire theatrical economy resting on a handful of big releases, and Hollywood is demonstrating, at considerable expense, how that model declines and ends."
To combat this, Jamier said that NYAFF actively hunts for independent talent in sidebars that others might skip, pointing to emerging directors in this year's lineup such as Park Joon-ho of "3670” and Kim Jin-yu of "Journey There.”
Jamier sees the festival's 25-year journey as clear proof that the theater experience is still alive and powerful. In 2002, the festival started in a single rented room at the Anthology Film Archives because New York had no dedicated place for Asian films. Now, the event sells out dozens of screenings weeks before opening night.
"Streaming made everything available, but the problem is availability trivialized content," Jamier noted.
"Presence is the one thing the platforms can’t stream. So a festival guards the older idea, watching a film with people, after years of pandemic and the phone’s private little exile. Fear, joy, love, sentiment, horror: These are connectors, and in a theater you can feel them spread from row to row."