The Road to Sampo

Sampoganeun gil

South Korea

1975

95 Min

Color

2.35:1

Korean

Currently 4.1/5 Stars.
1
2
3
4
5

SCR Yu Dong-hun, Hwang Seok-yeong

CAST Kim Jin-kyu, Baek Il-seob, Mun Suk, Kim Ki-bum, Kim Yong-hak, Choi Jae-ho, Seok In-su, Jang In-hwan, Seok Myeung-sun

Adapted from Hwang Seok-young’s novel, The Road to Sampo is the final and posthumous work of director Lee Man-hee. A young construction worker (Baek Il-seob) meets a middle-aged man named Jeong (Kim Jin-kyu), who is on his way back to his hometown ar serving time in prison and wandering from one construction site to another. It has been ten years since Jeong has seen his hometown of Sampo. The duo meet Baek-hwa (Mun Suk), a runaway bar hostess, at a restaurant in town and the three of them begin their journey together. —Korean Film Archive

Director

Lee Man-hee

Director Lee Man-hee was born in Hawangsimni-dong Seoul, in 1931, the youngest of 8 children. He participated in the Korean War deciphering enemy codes and duringthe years between 1956 and 1961, he worked as an assistant director under the directors Ahn Jong-hwa, Park Gu and Kim Myeong-je. He made his directorial debut in 1961 with Kaleidoscope (Jumadeung) with the support of Kim Seung-ho, one of the most famous actors of the era. Afterward, he proved that he could make movies that were commercially successful with Call 112 (112reul Dollyeora) (1962). He opened a new age of Korean noir and horror with Black Hair (Geomeun Meori) (1964) and The Devil’s Stairway (Mauigyedan) (1964). He also opened up new possibilities in Korean art films with Full Autumn (Manchu) (1966)and continued on this stylistic path with Homebound (Gwiro) (1967) and Holiday (Hyuil). With the decline of the Korean movie industry in the 1970s, he received fewer and fewer opportunities to make movies and this coincided… read more