Author: rb809rb

When “The Legend of Kitchen Soldier” was selected as the only K-drama in the Special Screening section at Series Mania in Lille earlier this year, it marked an early signal that something unusual was happening with a show that had started life as a calculated creative gamble. By July 31, when the series took best drama series at the Fifth Blue Dragon Series Awards, that signal had become a verdict.

The 12-episode series – produced by Studio Dragon and released as a TVING original on CJ ENM‘s Korean streaming platform – follows Kang Seong-jae, played by Park Ji-hoon, a young man who joins the military to escape a difficult reality. His trajectory shifts when a virtual quest screen appears before him, redirecting him toward life as an army cook. As he completes each mission, buried secrets within the military base begin to surface.

The show’s international performance has been striking across multiple platforms. It reached No. 2 overall on Disney+ Japan, ranked among the top three Korean drama titles on HBO Max across 17 countries and territories – performing especially strongly in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines – and landed in the Rakuten Viki top five across the Americas, Europe, Oceania and MENA. On Sept. 15, chief producer Kim Tae-hoon will take part in a creator talk at K-Brand Week in Poland, extending the show’s reach into a new European market.

None of this was treated as a foregone conclusion during production. The creative team at Studio Dragon made a series of deliberate formal choices that broke with K-drama convention, and they knew it.

Central among them was the editing. Rather than using visual style as a background element, the production foregrounded it as part of the show’s identity – building the virtual quest screen into the fabric of the series, and adopting a lo-fi, high-energy aesthetic that amplified the comedy rather than simply serving the narrative.

“I believe the success of ‘The Legend of Kitchen Soldier’ revolves around how experimental it was, especially in its direction and never-before-seen editing style, which hooks audiences instantly,” said Lee Hye-young, executive producer of “The Legend of Kitchen Soldier” at Studio Dragon. “However, it was also important for us to maintain depth in the show’s narrative. That’s why we incorporated the ‘over-the-top’ elements to an extent that would not interfere with the story’s cohesiveness.”

The challenge of holding that balance extended to the cast. Led by Park and Lee Sang-yi, both of whom carry established international fanbases, the ensemble also includes Han Dong-hee as Lieutenant Cho Ye-rin and Lee Hong-nae as Senior Sergeant Yoon Dong-hyun.

“While maintaining the extreme editing style, we also wanted to make sure the cast was not overwhelmed by these elements,” said Kim Tae-hoon, chief producer at Studio Dragon. “Thanks to all the cast members’ remarkable performances, we were able to bring our creative vision to life.”

The show also made a structural bet that distinguished it from the bulk of globally travelling K-drama: it placed comedy at the centre without a romance narrative to anchor it. K-drama’s international rise has been built substantially on romantic melodrama, and a straight comedy with no rom-com scaffolding represented a genuine departure. The series made that departure without sacrificing character depth – each member of the ensemble was given distinct motivation and a narrative arc, allowing audiences to build investment across the run.

The IP extended beyond the screen through Migak Boys, an in-universe K-pop group formed around the drama’s characters and their reactions to Kang Seong-jae’s cooking. The device brought together K-drama, K-pop and food culture within a single property, adding a layer of audience engagement beyond conventional viewership.

“The success of the TVING original ‘The Legend of Kitchen Soldier’ demonstrates that fresh genres and original storytelling can resonate with audiences both in Korea and around the world,” said Choi Bo-hyun, chief contents officer at TVING. “Building on TVING’s bold creative vision and CJ ENM’s content capabilities, we will continue to expand the diversity and global competitiveness of K-content.”

The Blue Dragon win and the Poland screening suggest the show’s impact is still accumulating. Sebastian Kim, head of the content business Unit at CJ ENM, said the series had opened a door the company intends to keep pushing through.

“The success of ‘The Legend of Kitchen Soldier’ is proof that diverse genres of K-dramas can succeed in the global entertainment market, opening a new era in which global audiences are ready to embrace unconventional storytelling,” Kim said. “Standing at the forefront of K-culture’s global expansion, CJ ENM will continue to challenge ourselves to develop stories that are different, unique, and unexpected for global fans, delivering consistent surprises and new experiences to audiences around the world.”

There are Greek waves aplenty lapping at the forlorn beachside setting of “Sea of Glass,” though they’re not especially weird ones. Amid a national cinema that has become internationally recognized for perverse plotting and deadpan absurdism, writer-director Alexis Alexiou‘s third feature stands out for its stark storytelling and earnest emotional intensity. There is more than a nod to classical Greek tragedy here, and the film — a contemporary tale of dysfunctional parent-child relationships with escalatingly brutal consequences — doesn’t wear it lightly. But a spirit of feminist independence also infiltrates these dark proceedings: Alexiou namechecks “Thelma and Louise” among his inspirations, and though “Sea of Glass” is never quite so rousing or rowdy, it’s finally a moving study of female allyship across generations.

It’s been 11 years since Alexiou’s last feature “Wednesday 04:45,” a sleek, Michael Mann-indebted thriller that, despite its ticking-clock narrative setup, really led with heavy neon-nights ambience — and toured the festival circuit extensively following its Tribeca premiere. “Sea of Glass,” which recently bowed out of competition at Edinburgh, is similarly stern with its neo-noir inflections, though its script, by Alexiou with Afroditi Nikolaidou, branches out effectively into raging family melodrama. The results are absorbing, but at 130 minutes, could stand some tightening: A slow-burning setup takes rather too long to segue into the stirring, high-stakes female friendship portrait at the film’s heart.

Though the louring atmospherics here are a leading attraction, “Sea of Glass” also serves as a strong showcase for veteran actress Evangelia Andreadaki (recently seen in last year’s Greek Oscar submission “Arcadia”), who’s charged with telling much of her character’s backstory in weary silence. In her mid-sixties, Vangelio’s days are spent caring for her older, bedridden husband, with little time or thought for herself, beyond perusing old tourist guidebooks with idle yearning; one introductory scene limns a life of under-appreciated, routine-bound service.

When the old man dies, her numb reaction appears caught between grief and relief, though her two adult sons show little understanding of her emotional state. Impulsively, Vangelio decides on some alone time, on her own terms — booking an off-season vacation at a coastal resort on the Greek island of Evia. Presumably overrun with holidaymakers in the summer, it’s chilly and dolefully quiet when she arrives, as is the shabby hotel she checks into: Excellent sound design, in particular, captures the lonesome reverberations of weather and water in this wintry limbo. Still, the rundown mood of the place suits Vangelio’s own. Here, at last, is somewhere she can productively do nothing.

Or it would be, if the hotel didn’t have its own drama of oppression and liberation brewing downstairs. 23-year-old Vicky (Christiana Matelska Toka) runs the establishment thanklessly and almost single-handedly, with little help from its owner, her boorish father (Michalis Iatropoulos). Dad is an abusive alcoholic, prone to berating and even assaulting his daughter in front of guests, of which Vangelio is currently the only one. That draws her into this domestic crisis whether she likes it or not; she soon forms a tacit bond with the desperately withdrawn Vicky, who’s visibly grateful for a maternal figure to confide in. Women have little voice in this community of stale, disappointed men, including the local cops who are her father’s best friends.

Vicky could run away, but feels an unconditional obligation to look after the man holding her down; Vangelio, recognizing something of the life she just escaped in the young woman’s plight, in turn feels duty bound to help her out of it. Freedom, when it comes, comes violently, cuing a final act that exhilaratingly changes the pace, location and emotional scale of proceedings. It’s Andreadaki’s weathered, keenly watchful performance, and her galvanizing connection with her younger, more recessive co-star, that keep things grounded as the story ramps up in severity and consequence.

The biblical title, drawn from a description in the Book of Revelation of the passage to heaven, also fittingly conjures the film’s aesthetic: DP Simos Sarketzis shoots in the softly frosted blues, greens and browns of glass shards faded and rounded by time and tide. Alexiou’s film feels defined by water, as the characters increasingly take to the ocean and stormy weather sets in from above. There is much pain, dirt and blood here to be washed away.

From the first frame, Kosara Mitić’s “17” refuses to pull any punches, plunging us immediately into the traumatic moment when a hookup between high-school student Sara (Eva Kostić) and two boys takes a violent turn. From here, this nervy teen drama from Macedonia picks up several months later and follows the withdrawn Sara over the first two days of a class trip to Greece, where one of her assailants is among the unruly group of youngsters. Winner of the Best Actress prize at Sarajevo after premiering in the Berlinale’s Perspectives section, the film has a bleak, unflinching gaze that sometimes skims the edges of shock-value miserablism. In the end, however, Mitić’s intrepid approach is undeniably bracing, and held together at its core by Kostić’s simmering performance. 

In the most superficial sense, “17” resembles one of this year’s more auspicious festival breakouts “La Gradiva”: Both follow a raucous senior class to a foreign country and in the process unearth dark truths about the gang via restlessly fluid camerawork that, in extended close-ups, mercilessly lays bare its protagonist’s anxieties. Also partly filled with nonprofessional young actors, Mitić’s hair-raising debut makes that French first feature look sunny by comparison. There’s a practical reason for this darkness beyond the obvious Eastern European somberness: The first day of the trip, and the bulk of the film, takes place in a stopover hotel in Bitola that cinematographer Naum Doksevski casts in dim jaundiced lights and long shadows. 

When the group arrives by bus, Sara is a conspicuously surly presence in her baggy sweatshirt and dragging jeans; her classmates, brusque, yappy, and shockingly entitled as they constantly talk back to their two teacher-chaperones, both grossly resigned to their students’ insolence. Denied the private room she paid double for because of a mix-up by hotel management, Sara must room with her guileless, overly eager friend Lina (Martina Danilovska) and her cool-girl ex bestie Nina (Eva Stojcevska). Nina is now dating the apish Filip (Dame Joveski), Sara’s ex and one of her rapists — unbeknownst to everyone, of course. 

By teasing out the dynamics between Sara, her classmates and her teachers, the script by Mitić and Ognjen Sviličić highlights a culture of shame and straight masculine privilege; a don’t-ask-don’t-tell world where girls, especially, are peer-pressured to party and surrender their bodies to (often brutal) male whims. Worse yet, in these girls’ heads, is the slut-shaming and bullying that would ensue should this cruel code of silence be broken.

And so, there’s a reason Sara is cagey, though Kostić’s remarkable breakout performance adds to this frayed reticence a coiled rage that comes out each time she lays eyes on Filip. That explodes into action in one startlingly seedy scene involving a rape in full view of revelers at a hotel party. When a hotel worker gets a beating from the sociopathic Filip and his juiced-up cronies, this sadism pushes the limits of credulity, though a comment from a teacher — that the kids better behave in Greece, a civilized country with real rules — reveals that Mitić might somewhat be thinking in metaphors.

In any case, it’s not just that Sara, whose terrible secret is concealed by the straps cinched around her rounded belly, feels dirtied and disgraced; there are layers to her knowing gaze. A smirk she gives to Nina, who chalks up Sara’s bad attitude to jealousy over Filip, conveys the pity of a veteran soldier talking down to a fresh recruit.

But because Sara is indeed only 17, wisdom is tempered by a quivering vulnerability as the reality of her pregnancy presses upon her, body and soul, forcing her to open up to Lina and discover the possibility of solidarity. Along with a brief moment of tenderness Sara experiences with her class’s resident dork, this feminine camaraderie makes for a nugget of niceness in a sea of despair. And at a border control checkpoint, a symbolic crossroads if there ever was one, Mitic has Sara decide in a bracing, breath-held final scene: Bury her truth at all costs or embrace it, haters be damned.