The Front Line (2011)

Director, Hun Jang. (133min)
The official Korean entry for best foreign film at the 2012 Academy Awards, it deals with a battle fought by a unit of the ROK Army on the eastern end of the fighting line in the days and hours before the 1953 ceasefire is due to come into effect. ‘Soldiers live and die by orders’ says one of the characters, and the film asks questions about the purpose and sometimes futility of fighting for little obvious gain, set against a visually compelling recreation of the vicious positional warfare that characterised the second half of the Korean War.