The recent Toronto International Film Festival made us aware of Korean director Yong Sang-Ho's sophomore feature effort called The Fake, which has been garnering attention at various festivals. Ho developed quite a reputation with his first animate feature called King Of Pigs, which focused on bullying and class inequality, whereas this new feature centers around the hypocrisy of organized religion.
The interesting thing about The Fake is the protagonist called Min-Chul, a man living on the fringes of society who definitely walks a moral gray line. Upon realizing that a religious elder is attempting to take advantage of his flock, he chooses to take matters into his own hands to expose the wrongdoing when he realizes he's in no position to point the finger.
Aside from really loving Yeon Sangho's grounded style, which reminded me of Naoki's Urasawa's Monster-The movie ventures into narrative territories that are fresh for the Korean animated feature scene, which have historically focused more on younger audiences. Really hoping that we'll get a limited release sometime soon in the US considering how great the reviews have been.
