Broker (2022)
(Beurokeo, Hirokazu Kore-eda, South Korea 2022, 129 min., DCP. Korean w/English subtitles)
Master Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda traveled to South Korea to make this film with Parasite breakout star Song Kang-ho, Doona Bae (whom he had worked with on Air Doll thirteen years earlier), and K-pop superstar IU (Ji-eun Lee). When a young mother (Lee) leaves her newborn son outside of a church’s “baby drop box,” two baby brokers (Song and Gong Dong-won) eliminate the evidence and take the baby on the black market. What they don’t realize is that they are being watched by a police detective hoping to catch them in the act. Another in the long line of Kore-eda’s humanist dramas about found family, these characters interact, clash, and undercut each other on the road to finding the baby its permanent home.