Monday, April 6, 2026 at 2:30 PM
Academy Museum, Los Angeles
Radical and uncompromising, Kim Ki-young’s Housemaid trilogy starts in 1960 with a first chapter that continues to influence new generations of filmmakers more than 60 years later. A deep survey on desire, obsession, and ego-driven revenge, this domestic horror film follows a bourgeois family who hires Myung-sook (Lee Eun-shim), an unsophisticated young woman, as their housemaid. When she becomes smitten with patriarch Dong-sik Kim, a series of strange episodes unfold, and Myung-sook’s catastrophic infatuation threatens the family bond. Kim’s unconventional language of cinema depicts a bleak reality that is borderline ludicrous, in an unconventional blend of genres that redefined filmmaking in Korea.