The King of Pigs (돼지의 왕)

Yeon Sang-ho, best known as the director of the zombie fest Train to Busan, made his debut with this remarkable animated film about school bullying, exploring the darkest sides of tormented adolescence. The out-of-control humiliations of the bullies create a tragedy which haunts the teenagers in their adult lives and dominates, even destroys, their entire existence. Without overstating the symbolism of his fable, the filmmaker makes it clear that the school arena – where extreme brutality, social inequality and injustice reign – is also a microcosm of Korean society. The sparse animation style and narrative ambition leans less towards the animated films made in Hollywood than towards Japanese anime, but with one noticeable difference: the characters are not given standard neutral facial features. Instead they are given an expressive morphology.

"As its fragmented narrative unfolds, the simple 'bullying-is-bad' story morphs into a darker, more complex allegory that examines societal problems, power dynamics and the human capacity for malevolence. It plays like a modern companion-piece to Lord of the Flies where the kids aren't the only ones who aren't alright." - ScreenAnarchy