When I spoke with Brian Hu, the artistic director of the San Diego Asian Film Festival, he told me the various “sections” the films are broken into were introduced when he joined the team. They have become a helpful way for attendees to curate their experience: if you want to see older films restored in their cinematic glory, you can watch the four titles under “Classics Restored.” If you’re here only for films from marquee directors who had their splashy debuts at European film festivals, “Masters” is for you. In watching the film’s line-up, it has been fun for me to come up with even more categories within what has already been established. “Tycoon,” “The Seoul Guardians,” and “Genevive’s Garden” may share little by way of plot or theme, but they are among the best films I screened here at the festival, gems whose passion rips through the screen, and whose defiance lies in the very act of existence. This dispatch is a love letter to those who have found a way where there was no way.
“The Seoul Guardians,” from directors and journalists Cho Chul-young, Kim Jong-woo, and Shin-Wan Kim, runs at seventy-one minutes and is more thrilling than features double its length. It is a striking piece of boots-on-the-ground journalism, a courageous act of documentation whose vitality is matched only by its craft; films like these are why the words “immersive” exist. That it packs so much in so little time is also a testament to the director’s journalistic commitment to let the story speak for itself. There are some occasional flourishes, from a heavy-handed score to a dramatically edited opening, that detract from it slightly, but the two Kims and Shin know the blazing power of the story they’ve captured; they just have to give it a place to burn.
The film documents arguably the most shocking six hours in modern Korean history, when, in 2024, South Korean president Yoon Sukyeol declared martial law, accusing the Democratic Party of collaborating with communists from North Korea. In reality, Yoon was frustrated by the blockage of his budget plans and stoked the nation’s tensions and fears against the North to divert attention away from his personal gripes. The politicians seek to gather to strike down this motion and attempt to gather at the National Assembly to vote, but while they are en route, Yoon deploys the military to stop the vote from being able to happen, so that martial law can continue. The two Kims and Cho bring their cameras and crew and race to the Assembly building, where lawmakers were already being blocked from entry by local security, to document the moment.
Whether they meant to or not, “The Seoul Guardians” has the rhythm of the most invigorating action films. As viewers, we’re immediately thrust into a storm of bodies, phones, and weapons, as we see citizens do what they can to let government members get through, who are in turn blocked by military and security forces. What is striking is the clarity with which we see these images, and despite the chaos of what unfolds, the film never feels nauseating or disjointed. It is the fact that this miscarriage of justice is captured in such crystal-clear clarity that makes it transportive and gut-wrenching. The film is propelled by its own sense of escalation; once enough lawmakers make it in to have a quorum, they swiftly begin to try to vote, with civilians standing outside the Assembly chambers, barricading entry by Yoon’s soldiers using everything from sofas, chairs, and their own bodies. That a coterie of teenagers, elders, journalists, YouTubers, and lawmakers (read: civilians) were able to hold their ground leaves you inspired by the power of collective action, and that we can witness what resistance looks like to abusive power up close.
This is a thrilling piece of filmmaking that has admirable scope beyond just the events it depicts. Cross-cutting with what we see on-screen in the present day is footage of the Gwangju massacre, where military forces were deployed against students and civilians by President Chun Doo-hwan. We have the opportunity to learn from the ghosts of the wrongly butchered, and it seems Korea, and the world at large, still need to take better care to listen. It is also ironic that once martial law is overturned and Yoon is on trial, his supporters who call for his innocence wave Korean flags intertwined with American ones. Though ironically, if Korea was looking at the deteriorating state of US democracy as an exemplar, perhaps it should not surprise what transpired.
An ode to saran wrap, wheelies, and well-cooked eggs, a riveting handmade visual style characterizes Charlotte Zhang’s “Tycoon,” which feels like it teaches you how to engage with it as you watch it. It made me want to grab a MiniDV and shoot something forbidden and intimate, and crosscut it with the wackiest images saved to my camera roll.
“Tycoon” may limit what it shows on-screen, but Zhang’s film, set in 2028 Los Angeles as the city prepares to host the Olympics, has all the apocalyptic trimmings of the most transgressive visions that depict how the common folk are to find some cool in a burning world. In Zhang’s version of the future, documentation is vengeance and reclamation, a way to paper over society’s attempts to white out your story by making sure yours exists on a DCP somewhere. In this way, her work is as much an act of bearing witness as it is a “how-to” guide for survival.
This prophetic narrative is grounded by focusing on outlaw-entrepreneurs (how different are those vocations, really?) Miguel Padilla-Juarez and Jon Lawrence Reyes see the city’s physical deterioration and moral rot as an opportunity to score big. In this world, viruses have eliminated meat and poultry production, which means eating roaches is the most viable way to get protein. Where there’s need, there’s exploitation, and Zhang is quick to highlight how we can be so quick to label the CEO of cockroach protein powder as an entrepreneur whose inordinate prices for product are a sign of innovation, while swiftly condemning Padilla-Juarez and Lawrence Reyes as criminals worthy of punishment when they take advantage of the city’s cockroach infestation to steal said powder. The fluidity of identity, based on one’s wealth status and high standing (or lack thereof), is a core provocation of Zhang’s film; the battle for her characters to remain whole takes on an existential tenor as they oscillate between the love they experience in their home communities and the city at large that only values them for their invisibility.
Zhang’s film moves with a convulsive rhythm, the joy of which comes from seeing how she imbues a sea of images with a singular action. Take a moment where the duo is running away from a score, and she juxtaposes their fleeing with diagrams of a dissected human body in flight, tying their story to a larger one of migration and movement. It kept me on my feet with its urgent editing, and yet I never felt like I was lost because the script would pepper in anchoring profundities, delivered with nonchalant profundity by Padilla-Juarez and Lawrence Reyes; lines like “It’s not about winning. It’s about coming up with ways to never lose,” are prayers of blessing as much as they are articulations of philosophy. “Tycoon” is a project remarkably comfortable with silence as well, for as livewire as its energy may be, capturing the gleeful feeling of being unnoticed in a city gripped by insomnia, where you come alive in its unpredictable slumber. As Zhang’s film shows, sometimes, the thrills of a well-executed plan are only matched by the thrills of getting caught.
What has pleasantly surprised me about SDAFF’s programming is that, of the 190+ films in the line-up, a good number of them are shorts. There are so many shorts that each shorts block has its own theme. Many filmmakers screening their feature-length works at SDAFF are alumni of the shorts program, and director Katie Colosimo’s debut, “Genevieve’s Garden,” falls into that category. It is a quirky, lo-fi comedy that manages to resonate emotionally amidst the laughs, because it sands down the more sensationalized elements that a lesser story might have focused on to obfuscate any narrative shortcomings. This has the bones of a cult story, but where the drama comes is from the characters’ embrace of their circumstance, rather than trying to escape.
Colosimo’s script is quick to remind us why wellness spaces are so attractive to the wounded and lacking in their promises, in that they offer dramatic and quick relief to wounds that need time to be soothed. We witness Lily (Chynna Walker, who from beat one is in lockstep with this film’s deadpan register) confusingly weeping over why she’s being broken up with. Through an evangelism that is refreshingly modern, while doomscrolling, Lily stumbles upon Genevieve’s (Laura Hetherington) videos, inviting anyone whom the algorithm has recruited to join her on her retreat. She meets four other attendees at Genevieve’s “center” (read: her house) upstate, and they may never bloom beyond the archetypes they play; each one is memorable, particularly Hannah Marianetti’s Olivia, who remains sardonically unimpressed with the cloying claptrap Genevieve espouses.
Indeed, while Hetherington plays a believable wellness guru, a retreat leader you would happily endure all sorts of uncomfortably directionless yoga for, the clever joke is that from the start, Lily and all the wellness attendees can see through Genevive’s act, despite her poise. They realize from the start that they have spent a whole lot of money to essentially just hang out with strangers, clean her house for the sake of “getting more in touch with their bodies,” and be off their phones. They are all good sports about it because they know that opportunities to unplug and unwind are few and far between, and for Lily, who begins to catch feelings for one of the attendees, Charlie (Jose Duran), she’s determined to find some form of salvation from this sham.
The film’s humor comes from a deep understanding that our modern-day rhythms ill-equip us to deal with the aches of our hearts. Cinematographer Jacob Mallin captures the breezy beauty of Genevieve’s home, but his lens also centers the discontent of the characters’ faces, which stands out as they go through the motions of yoga. Their visages betray the peace their bodies are trying to summon into being. Walker, in her adorably awkward and sincere yearning, captures the ways we can so easily look to what’s novel and new to be our salvation, evidenced by her going head over heels for Charlie, despite their lack of chemistry. The curse and blessing of modern life is its noise, with its endless distractions always providing an out for us to never fully contend with the deeper discontent within. “Genevieve’s Garden” dignifies silence, offering a picture of how to gracefully engage with the histories we have deemed shameful. Colosimo’s film may not give definitive answers to a question as eternal as the problem of suffering, but she knows that it certainly will not be solved by isolated wallowing. Better to shit talk and unsuccessfully flirt in a real, embodied community.
Hence then, the article about san diego asian film festival 2026 the seoul guardians tycoon genevieve s garden was published today ( ) and is available on Roger Ebert ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( San Diego Asian Film Festival 2026: The Seoul Guardians, Tycoon, Genevieve’s Garden )
Also on site :
- Reality TV Fans Are on a Mission to Unmask the Hulu or Bravo Husband Who Made an Inappropriate Remark About an Inner-Circle Woman
- One of the ‘Greatest Songwriters of All Time,’ Nicknamed ‘The Storyteller,’ Hit No. 1 52 Years Ago With a Song That Defined Country Music
- Knott’s Berry Farm Sold Just 8 Chicken Dinners for 65 Cents Each in 1934; 63 Years Later, the Theme Park Sold for $300 Million