CJ ENM has sold Yeon Sang-ho’s psychological thriller “Paradise Lost” to 118 countries worldwide, while the film gets its U.S. premiere at the Hawaii International Film Festival on November 1 and 4. The international haul includes Twin for Japan, The Jokers Films for France, and Well Go USA for North America.
Paradise Lost (Credits: CJ ENM)
The sales haul comes after sold-out screenings at the Toronto and Busan film festivals, where the film screened in Special Presentations and Gala Presentation sections respectively. It hits South Korean theaters on October 21.
A Mother’s Impossible Choice
Based on the novel “Black Inferno” by Oh Seong-eun, “Paradise Lost” follows Ryu So-young (Kim Hyun-joo), a grieving mother whose young son vanished along with a bus carrying thirteen children to a winter camp nine years ago.
To cope, So-young turns to “Children of Paradise,” an augmented-reality program that reconstructs the lost children using artificial intelligence. She starts every day talking to an AI version of her son that never ages — a routine that sustains her until the real boy unexpectedly walks back through her door.
The returned son, played by Bae Hyeon-seong, is older, darker, and cold — barely recognizable. Caught between the artificial child she raised and the flesh-and-blood stranger standing in front of her, So-young plunges into a spiral of confusion and dread.
Yeon Sang-ho’s New Nightmare
The filmmaker behind “Train to Busan” and “Hellbound” says the title is a direct reference to John Milton’s epic poem — a story about leaving a perfect, artificial paradise and re-entering a flawed, uncomfortable reality. “I wanted to make a story about gaining a human identity by moving from a complete paradise into an imperfect world,” Yeon said at the film’s Seoul press conference.
The project’s origin is unusually personal. Yeon’s own mother once wrote him three pages of notes in pencil during a holiday visit. He bought the idea from her, and that outline eventually became the novel — and then, in its third iteration, this film.
Shot on a reported budget of just 500 million won (around $374,000), the film maximizes its dismal tone with a forlorn mining town setting — a stark contrast against the sleek high-tech company that built the AI program profiting from grieving parents.
Early reviews have praised Kim Hyun-joo’s performance as the film’s emotional anchor, with critics calling the reunion between mother and son “charged with emotional uncertainty.” With 118 territories now aboard, the world is about to meet So-young’s impossible choice.
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Source: Deadline — read the full story there.
