The Fin
Ajyal Feature Film Competition - Doha Film Festival 2025
Syeyoung Park / South Korea, Germany, Qatar / 2025 / 83 min / Colour / DCP / In Korean / Arabic, English subtitles
Themes: Drama, Science Fiction
Rated: 
Mature subject matter. Not suitable for minors. Individuals under the age of 18 are not admitted into cinemas.
Description
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In a post-war, ecologically ruined Korea, a new social order classifies “Omegas”, mutated outcasts, who are tracked, captured and exploited as disposable labour. One of them, living under false calm, works at an eerie indoor fishing store, a melancholy replica of the sea where city dwellers buy the illusion of escape. When a young civil servant notices inconsistencies in the Omega’s routine, curiosity becomes pursuit, and the pillars of doctrine begin to wobble. The film’s tension is less about chase than about a mind unlearning certainty. Made with a taste for texture over polish, the story slowly unfurls into a study of fear, grief and helplessness when systems fail and rituals disappear.
The city’s pageantry slowly recedes, and what remains are rooms, faces, and the unnerving calm of simulated nature. Even the fishing store, once a modest substitute for the ocean, appears as a symptom: a bright façade over an emptiness too persistent to cover. Rejecting easy heroics, the film asks what is forgotten in the rush forward and what mutates when buried. As suspicion and empathy pull the civil servant in opposite directions, the narrative traces the thin line between order and complicity, survival and surrender.
Director
Syeyoung Park
Syeyoung Park is a Seoul-based filmmaker. He Graduated from the Korea National University of Arts (BFA in Film; MFA in Video Arts). His debut feature, ‘The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra’ (2022), won three awards at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, including Best Director at the Seoul Independent Film Festival, and a Special Jury Mention at Fantasia; it also screened at Sitges, Berlin Critics’ Week, and Torino. ‘The Fin’ is his second feature.
Credits
- Screenwriter
- Syeyoung Park
- Producer
- Heejung Oh, Philippe Bober, Syeyoung Park
- Cinematographer
- Syeyoung Park
- Editor
- Clémentine Decremps, Syeyoung Park, Jiyoon Han, Benjamin Mirguet
- Music
- Seokyoung Haam
- Cast
- Yeji Yeon, Pureum Kim, Goh-Woo, Youngdoo Jeong, Joowon Meng