The film festival organizer said, ‘When we called, they told us, ‘We don’t support festivals with political nature.’
On the eve of the 5th Seoul Larkspur International Film Festival (SLIFF), a major South Korean cinema unexpectedly canceled all scheduled festival screenings without notice, despite contracts being signed and tickets already sold.
The abrupt decision came from MEGABOX Dongdaemun, the official screening venue of SLIFF, one day before the festival’s opening on May 30, affecting multiple films documenting the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) human rights abuses. Organizers said they were shocked, and filmmakers said they were outraged.
“This is the first time I’ve seen something like this happen in Korea,” said Heo Eun-doh, SLIFF’s general director and chief curator. “A theater unilaterally canceling international human rights films—there’s no question this was due to external pressure.”
MEGABOX is one of Korea’s largest theater chains, with more than 100 locations nationwide. According to the SLIFF organizers, they had provided all the materials to the Dongdaemun branch, had signed a contract, and had paid the full rental fee upon the approval that had been stamped by MEGABOX headquarters.
Heo told The Epoch Times that his team had been monitoring ticket sales and had found that everything suddenly vanished.
“When we called, they told us, ‘We don’t support festivals with political nature,’” he said.
Ticket sales for the festival began just the night before, on May 28, and some showings—including the May 31 screening of “State Organs”—had already sold out. But by midday on May 29, all listings had disappeared from MEGABOX’s website.
“State Organs,” a 76-minute documentary produced by Peabody Award-winner Raymond Zhang, follows the perilous search of two families for their missing loved ones in China, according to the film’s synopsis, revealing evidence of state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting, a practice unique to China that involves the killing of the organ donor.
Zhang spent seven years gathering evidence and interviewing families of victims for the documentary. He arrived in South Korea on the afternoon of May 29 to attend the festival’s opening ceremony.
Zhang refuted the political allegations by the Megabox theater.
“This is not a political film—it addresses universal values such as humanity and human rights,” he said.
“I believe the sudden cancellation in Korea was driven by interference from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). When the film was screened in Taiwan, I received over a hundred threatening emails and messages and was targeted by pro-CCP cyberattacks. I didn’t expect similar tactics to appear in South Korea.”
Threats of mass shootings, bomb detonations, and systematic hacking were reported before and during the screening of the documentary in Taiwan last year.
Other films affected by the last-minute cancellation include “Eternal Spring,” “Unsilenced,” and “Revolution of Our Times.” The first two films depict the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong, a spiritual faith, in China, and the third film is a documentary on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement in 2019.
Despite the setback, Zhang emphasized his belief in South Korean society.
“I still believe Korea is a free and democratic country, and its citizens won’t be swayed by this kind of pressure,” he said.
By Sophia Lam
