Looking for your latest K-Culture fix? Well, it turns out London’s not a bad place to be this November.
As 2000 years’ worth of artworks, sculptures, and treasures grace the for the four-month Korea exhibition, the annual K-Music Festival welcomes dulcimer-driven post-rock outfit to the Rich Mix, while pianist reimagines the bebop jazz of Charlie Parker at the legendary Ronnie Scott’s. In the midst of the action, the 21st edition of the venerable London Korean Film Festival (LKFF) returns to the BFI Southbank, the ICA, and Ciné Lumiere from November 2-16 – with a bumper line-up of cutting-edge K-Cinema in tow.
With Park Chan-wook’s black comedy and Na Hong-jin’s sci-fi action epic still fresh in our minds, a high bar has been set for LKFF 2026. But with the long-awaited return of one of the greatest filmmakers on the planet, a shockingly bloody closing gala, and vital new works starring veterans from classics like among the programme highlights this year, the festival clearly means business – as usual.
Still working out where to get started? Check out seven of Time Out’s top picks below – you can us later.
1. Possible Love
One of the world’s greatest living filmmakers – director Lee Chang-dong – finally returns from an eight-year hiatus with an expansive but nuanced tale of simmering class tensions and exploitation. Inspired by a scandal of mass layoffs and violent protest suppression, this story of a working class couple who become the subjects of an affluent woman’s documentary is made all the more incisive thanks to powerhouse performances from two of Lee’s brightest muses: 2007 Cannes Best Actor winner Jeon Do-yeon () and three-time Grand Bell Award winner Sul Kyung-gu (). The film’s already won Lee his second Venice Silver Lion, and has also been announced as Korea’s official submission for the 2027 Academy Award. It’s a must-see.
2. The World of Love
Yoon Ga-eun’s delicate, empathetic story of an outgoing high-schooler navigating the repercussions of an adolescent trauma was widely considered one of the country’s best films of 2025. Indeed, after its appearance at last year’s BFI London Film Festival, it almost instantly joined Time Out’s ranking of the best Korean movies of all time. One notable fan was a certain Bong Joon-ho, who ranked the director alongside Palme d’Or winners Abbas Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry) as ‘one of the “big three masters” of bringing child actors to life on the screen’.
3. The Accordion Door
A stand-out feature within the LKFF’s ‘Cinema Now’ strand, follows a prodigious but introverted third-grader quietly processing a repressed childhood trauma: Ji-soo (Busan Film Festival 2025 Actor of the Year Moon Woo-jin) firmly believes that a mysterious substance entered his body when he was nine, and granted him an uncanny ability to write. The illusion is unsettled when a tomboyish, football-loving transfer student arrives at his school in this uneasy drama from feature debutant Son Kyeong-su.
4. My Daughter Is a Zombie + Q&A with actor Lee Jung-eun
In the decades since A Monstrous Corpse marked the country’s first zombie movie in 1981, Korea has established a surprisingly rich heritage for films about the living dead – after all, who can forget Train to Busan? Pil Gam-sung’s adventure-comedy spin on the genre, though, is a more quirky and colourful departure that eschews the usual fleshy violence for something much more heartfelt. It also notably reunites two key cast members from one of whom will be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A.
5. Bedford Park
This tender romantic drama earned director Stephanie Ahn the Special Jury Award for Debut Feature at Sundance – and rightly so. glides on the chemistry of its leads, as the film traces the unlikely connection between two second-gen Korean American immigrants: a physical therapist and an ex-wrestler. Set in New Jersey, the film offers a natural parallel to Celine Song’s 2023 sensation in more ways than one, while needle drops from Beach House offer a cultured touch of a different kind.
6. Tristes Tropiques + Q&A with director Park Hoon-jung
is so intensely violent that some of the festival programmers are still feeling anxious about screening it – although that hasn’t stopped them from booking Park Hoon-jung a flight to the UK for a Q&A at the festival’s Closing Gala screening. It’s a brutally kinetic and relentless action noir rife with assassin squads and copious headshots, But with the heavyweight director behind cat-and-mouse crime classic at the wheel, promises more than just gut-churning spectacle.
7. Hana Korea
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How many of 45 greatest Korean films ever made have you seen?