These are five films you shouldn’t miss at the Seoul International Food Film Festival which will take place from October 11 – 19, 2023 in Seoul, Korea.

A Table for Two by Kim Bo-ram – Korea | 2022 – 89 minutes | Documentary
Chae-young, who has lived with an eating disorder for 15 years, leaves behind the goal of full recovery and searches for a way to embrace her condition. Sang-ok, Chae-young’s mother, who still has not found the cause of her daughter’s anorexia, grapples with her own past to find the origin of her daughter’s illness. <A Table for Two> (2022) is Kim’s second feature length documentary, which won BIFF Mecenat Award at the 27th Busan Int’l Film Festival. (SIFFF 2023)

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Into the Weeds: Dewayne “Lee” Johnson vs Monsanto Company by Jennifer Baichwal – Canada | 2022 – 97 minutes | Documentary
Dewayne Johnson, a Bay Area groundskeeper, suffered from rashes in 2014 and wondered if they were caused by the herbicide he’d been using. As his health deteriorated, Johnson became the face of a David-and-Goliath legal battle to hold multinational agrochemical corporation Monsanto accountable for a product with allegedly misleading labelling. Roundup, which is sold in more than 130 nations, is a glyphosate-based herbicide, and has been a signature product for Monsanto for over four decades. Scientists raised concerns about its environmental impact and carcinogenic properties, but Monsanto’s deep-pocketed corporate lawyers, lobbyists and marketers deflected numerous studies and disputed the findings.  (SIFFF 2023)

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Komada – A Whisky Family by YOSHIHARA Masayuki – Japan | 2023 – 91 minutes | Animation
Kotaro visits Komada Distillery for a project on Japanese craft whisky. Led by young female president Rui, who took over the family business, the distillery works hard to reproduce its signature whisky, Koma, which they had to stop making years ago. However, not to mention financial backing, too many clues are missing to revive the once lost whisky. (SIFFF 2023)

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The Zen Diary by NAKAE Yuji – Japan | 2022 – 111 minutes | Fiction
Tsutomu, living alone in a tranquil mountain, sustains himself by cooking with vegetables he personally cultivates, embracing a life in sync with the natural flow. He is not only a writer but also a contemplator of his existence, with the unburied remains of his wife, who passed away 13 years ago, still present. Amidst his daily routine of finding joy in cooking for the occasional visitor, Machiko, a editor, he reminisces about the past and contemplates his own life and death. (SIFFF 2023)

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Time of Seeds by SEOL Suan – Korea | 2022 – 101 minutes | Documentary
Two farmers, Yoon Gyusang and Jang Gui-deok, have been saving and planting their own seeds for decades. They have been working on the same things every year according to the natural and physical time flow. Their surroundings change and their ordinary labor for lives became special. There are people who look for the seeds preserved by their special labors. The cycle, in the end, doesn’t end that easily.

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For more information, please visit: https://sifff.kr/index.html