Yeok (Kang Kyunghun), a middle-aged teacher raising a son and a daughter alone, witnesses students fall to their deaths from the rooftop of the school where she works. Discovering that her daughter Hyejeong (Sim Su-bin) was also present at the scene, she presses her for answers, but Hyejeong only repeats the same words: ‘There was a bird in the sky.’ As the strange, unexplained deaths continue, Yeok, together with a reporter covering the case and a streamer who runs a birding channel, head towards the birds’ habitat. In the SF fantasy drama The Birds, falling humans seem helplessly drawn by some overwhelming, inexplicable force, as if intoxicated and entranced by a mysterious substance, plunging of their own accord and drifting listlessly. This astonishing phenomenon is not merely temporary, but a reflection of the merciless and brutal logic of this world - and, at the same time, a fierce assault on it. Strange and sorrowful is a world in which adults and children alike are steeped in melancholy, unable to endure or even be themselves without recourse to fantasy and hallucination.
Sohn Hyun-lok was born in Busan in 1992. He graduated from Hongik University majoring in Video and Film, and earned his Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Film from the Korea National University of Arts. His first feature film, That Summer′s Lie (2023), was screened in the New Currents section of the Busan International Film Festival and won the FIPRESCI Prize. The Birds is his second feature film.
From Busan International Film Festival 2026, No. 31
