Top 5 Korean romantic films you must watch
Here are the Top 5 Korean romantic films curated with:
Read story 1 minA journal of cinema & filmmaking
Cinmaa Cinema. Decoded. Stories. Reimagined.
Scene theory, cinematic craft and the world's great film cultures, explained with care. For people who want to know how cinema works, and why it moves us.
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Screening room
Screening room
Cinema explained
The Glossary
42 terms from the language of filmmaking, explained in plain words with examples from world cinema.
Term of the day · Cinematography
Dolly zoom
Moving the camera toward or away from a subject while zooming the opposite way, so the background appears to stretch or compress.
Read the full entryThe craft of filmmaking
How films are made
Nine disciplines, one frame. Each has its own library of stories, breakdowns and glossary terms.
- Directing Turning a script into performances, pictures and rhythm.
- Cinematography Light, lens and movement: how the image is made.
- Screenwriting Structure, character and the architecture of a scene.
- Editing Where the film is found: rhythm, continuity and meaning in the cut.
- Sound Dialogue, Foley, music and the uses of silence.
- Acting Performance, preparation and playing to the lens.
- Production Design Building the world: sets, props, palette and period.
- VFX Compositing, simulation and the invisible digital work.
- Color Grading The final look: contrast, palette and mood.
World cinema
Discover cinema around the world
Film history moves in waves. Pick a region to read the movement that put it on the world's screens.
Italy
Neorealism
1943 – 1952
Out of the rubble of the Second World War, Italian directors took their cameras into the streets. They cast non-professional actors, shot on location, and told stories about ordinary people and hard work.
The movement proved that a film could be made with almost nothing and still move the entire world.
- Key directors
- Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti
- Start with
- Rome, Open City (1945) · Bicycle Thieves (1948)
- Influenced
- The Indian parallel cinema of Ray and Ritwik Ghatak, and the Iranian New Wave.
France
French New Wave
1958 – 1968
A group of film critics picked up lightweight cameras and broke the rules they had written about. Jump cuts, handheld shots and characters who talk to the camera became a new grammar.
They championed the idea of the director as author, the auteur.
- Key directors
- Truffaut, Godard, Varda, Chabrol
- Start with
- The 400 Blows (1959) · Breathless (1960) · Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)
- Influenced
- Independent cinema everywhere, from Scorsese to Wong Kar-wai.
Japan
Golden Age
1950s
Japanese studios produced a run of masterpieces that won the top prizes at Venice and Cannes. Rashomon's Golden Lion in 1951 opened the West's eyes.
The range was enormous: samurai epics, quiet family dramas, and ghost stories.
- Key directors
- Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi
- Start with
- Rashomon (1950) · Tokyo Story (1953) · Seven Samurai (1954)
- Influenced
- Westerns, Star Wars, and the modern action ensemble.
India
Parallel & epic cinema
1955 – today
India makes more films than any other country, in more than a dozen languages. Alongside the song-and-dance mainstream, Ray's Apu trilogy launched a realist parallel cinema.
In the Telugu industry, mythological spectacles like Mayabazar (1957) grew into the global epics of S. S. Rajamouli.
- Key directors
- Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, K. V. Reddy, S. S. Rajamouli
- Start with
- Pather Panchali (1955) · Mayabazar (1957) · Baahubali (2015) · RRR (2022)
- Influenced
- A pan-Indian film industry now watched on every continent.
Korea
Korean New Wave
Late 1990s – today
After censorship eased in the 1990s, a generation of Korean directors mixed genres with fearless energy: thrillers that turn into comedies, horror that becomes social critique.
The wave peaked when Parasite won both the Palme d'Or and the Oscar for Best Picture.
- Key directors
- Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-wook, Lee Chang-dong
- Start with
- Oldboy (2003) · Memories of Murder (2003) · Parasite (2019)
- Influenced
- Genre cinema worldwide, and the reach of Korean series today.
Iran
Iranian New Wave
1960s – today
Working under strict censorship, Iranian filmmakers turned limits into poetry. Children, long car journeys and blurred lines between fiction and documentary became signatures.
Their films show how much can be said with very little.
- Key directors
- Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Jafar Panahi, Asghar Farhadi
- Start with
- Where Is the Friend's House? (1987) · Taste of Cherry (1997) · A Separation (2011)
- Influenced
- Minimalist and docu-fiction filmmaking across the world.
Soviet Union
Soviet Montage
1924 – 1930
Soviet filmmakers argued that meaning comes from the collision of two shots. Editing, rather than the single image, became the heart of cinema.
The Odessa Steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin is still taught in every film school.
- Key directors
- Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Vsevolod Pudovkin
- Start with
- Battleship Potemkin (1925) · Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
- Influenced
- The action edit, the music video, and the modern trailer.