A-list Korean actor to open film festival

South Korean actor Ahn Sung-ki will open the Vietnamese - Korean Film Festival on Saturday at CGV Theatre, 54A Nguyen Chi Thanh street in Hanoi. - Photo courtesy of the organising board (Source: VNA)

Hanoi (VNA) - A-list actor of the Republic of Korea Ahn Sung-ki will attend the RoK - Vietnam Film Festival’s opening ceremony on December 15 in Hanoi.

This is a good chance for Korean movie fans in Hanoi to meet Sung-ki, who is regarded as a Korean national icon and is one of the most famous artists in the RoK. Along with Lee Byung Hun, he was one of the first Korean actors to leave his footprints in Hollywood in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in 2012.

"Sung-ki is a legend in Korean cinema," said the Korean Cultural Centre’s director and festival organiser Park Hye-jin. "He is still one of Korea’s hardest working actors and he has made his contribution to bring popular Korean culture and Korean film to the world."

Sung-ki began his acting career at the age of five with The Twilight Train by Kim Ki-young. He had a small role in the famous The Housemaid in 1960 at the age of eight. He took a break of about 10 years from film acting, graduating from the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies’ Vietnamese Study Department.

He won the respect and admiration of audiences and critics. His first international award was for the best child actor at the San Francisco Film Festival in 1960 for his role in Defiance of a Teenager.

The opening ceremony will show Unbowed at 5.30pm, with Sung-ki in the leading role. The film is directed by Chung Ji-young based on by the true story of a maths professor. It was produced on a low budget with the actors’ willingness to receive little pay. The film became a box office hit with 3.4 million tickets sold.

A talk with the actor will be held before the film showing, which will be presented by Korean ambassador to Vietnam Lee Hyuk and popular Vietnamese television actresses Bao Thanh and Hong Diem.-VNA