‘DISTRESSING’

Venice Film Festival Takes Flak for Honoring Accused Director

Kim Ki-duk was facing an array of sexual-abuse allegations when he died in 2020.

When South Korean filmmaker Kim Ki-duk died of COVID in 2020, he was living in self-imposed exile after being accused of sexual misconduct by an array of actresses. Now the Venice Film Festival is taking flak for giving over one of its coveted slots to his last movie, Call of God. “I’d say it was a kind of fidelity to the director, a kind of mutual respect and trust between the filmmaker and the festival,” Venice Film Festival’s director Alberto Barbera told The Hollywood Reporter. “When Kim Ki-duk’s Estonian friends contacted me a year ago saying that they were working on completing the film that Ki-duk couldn’t finish, because he died during production, I thought we couldn’t let this opportunity pass.” But Kim’s accusers say they are being re-traumatized. “It’s distressing for the victims,” said the lawyer for one woman.