A mother believes her half-witted son is wrongfully accused of murder. Desperate to find the real murderer she goes on a maternal rampage, however her desperation is a murderous one. There have been many films about fathers or patriarchal figures in the history of Korean cinema, but not many about mothers. In fact, the mother character has usually been a symbol of unbinding forgiveness and parental love. However with Mother it is not as simple as that. Actress Kim Hye-ja (“Late Autumn”) takes a very brave step as she willingly betrays her own iconic mother persona which she built so carefully through her three-decade spanning career.

Bong Joon-ho (“Barking Dogs Never Bite”) is one of the most commercially as well as critically acclaimed Korean directors. His previous films have all renewed and expanded Korean genre cinema. In his hands, respectively, “Memories of Murder” a murder mystery, and “The Host” a monster film, became something more than their generic conventions tend to define. Equally, Mother is a whodunit crime thriller, but more than that too.