Kim Gina Returns to Venice Film Festival with VR Short TEARLESS 

 ​Jun Jongseo 

Traveling to the Lido for the first time will be Burning (2018) actress Jun Jongseo with her Hollywood debut Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon, which was invited to the main competition.

Following her breakout debut in Lee Changdong’s Burning, Jun Jongseo appeared in the Netflix film The Call (2020) and quickly forged a path into Hollywood after being cast in Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon. From Ana Lily Amirpour, the director of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, the fantasy film also stars Kate Hudson, Craig Robinson, Evan Whitten and Ed Skrein. 

Kim Gina is set to return to the Venice International Film Festival this year with her new VR shot Tearless. Kim previously earned the Best Virtual Reality Short Story in 2017 for her film Bloodless.   

Tearless is an immersive VR work that explores the phenomenon of Korean women forced to work as comfort women for US soldiers stationed at bases in Korea. The film focuses particularly on the ‘Monkey House’, a prison established by the Korean government and staffed by the US military in the 1970s to isolate and treat comfort women with venereal diseases.

Meanwhile, the Iranian film Zalava, a recipient of the KOFIC Award at the 2019 edition of the Hong Kong Asian Film Financing Forum (HAF), has been selected for the competition section of the Venice International Film Critics’ Week. The film, about a demon who terrorizes a village in the 1970s, was directed by Arsalan Amiri.