The Great Flood

Official selection

Family/ChildSF/FantasyDisaster

On the day a meteor strike melts the Antarctic ice and a great flood engulfs the world, the waters rise to submerge even high-rise apartments. An-na (Kim Da-mi) struggles desperately to save her son, Ja-in. Meanwhile, Hee-jo (Park Hae-soo), a member of a private security team, is dispatched to rescue her. He tells An-na, an AI researcher, that she is destined to play a crucial role in creating a new humanity in the world on the brink of collapse. But in moments of crisis, strange memories suddenly overwhelm her, and An-na, who has been researching artificial intelligence with emotions, finds herself spiraling into confusion. The Great Flood is a distinctive SF dystopian time-loop drama that uses a disaster scenario to probe the depths of the human heart. More akin to a microscope than a telescope, the fi lm shifts its focus from large-scale spectacles of human struggle in catastrophe to a more intimate exploration of fear, trauma, and maternal love as experienced by one person trapped in a confined space and caught in endlessly repeating situations. Following An-na’s desperate journey for survival in an abandoned apartment complex, where the absence of people feels like the aftermath of the world’s end, the audience gradually comes face to face with unexpected truths. This is a labyrinthine fi lm that probes not the enormity of disaster, but the far greater depths of the human soul.

Programme note by SONG Kyung-won