{"id":96550,"date":"2026-07-23T18:42:25","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T18:42:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/96550\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T18:42:25","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T18:42:25","slug":"the-seoul-guardians-fantasia-fest-2026-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/96550\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Seoul Guardians\u2019 \u2013 Fantasia Fest 2026 Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I first became aware of The Seoul Guardians, directed by Kim Jong-Woo, Kim Shin-Wan, and Cho Chul-Young<\/a>, and learned what it was about, I instantly knew I had to see it no matter what. This is because I had a vested interest in the documentary\u2019s subject matter: the 2024 South Korean martial law crisis. For anyone unfamiliar with this topic, in December 2024, the then-South Korean President, Yoon Suk Yeol, declared martial law in an attempt to initiate a self-coup, accusing the Korean Democratic Party (DPK), his opposition party that controlled a majority of the Assembly, of colluding with North Korean communists and committing anti-democratic activities. <\/p>\n

While the martial law itself didn\u2019t last a day, it was nonetheless a crucial moment in how easily our liberties and rights could be taken away and how hard it can be to fight to keep them. President Yoon claimed he was doing this to protect South Korean democracy and keep out the so-called traitors. That night, as this documentary excellently showcases, it was the protestors and people of South Korea who were doing those things.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Before I go further into what exactly makes this documentary great, it\u2019s important to establish what The Seoul Guardians isn\u2019t. This film is not a breakdown of who President Yoon is, his motivations for enacting martial law (beyond the obvious reasons), and any other context needed to understand the causes and effects of this event. This documentary requires the audience to be at least somewhat familiar with the subject matter as it jumps straight into the central story with very little elaboration. This is what I would consider to be The Seoul Guardians\u2019 only real flaw, because while I myself had no personal issue with this approach as I was actively following the story when it first broke, I can imagine for a person less familiar with Korean politics or recent history, they would be left out of any much-needed context for why this event took place and the ramifications following its conclusion. <\/p>\n

To its credit, the film does not attempt to be a thoroughly educational experience; instead, it prioritizes being an unfiltered, in-the-moment look into what happened during the night of the martial law crisis. However, it is worth noting that the audience will at least need to do some Google searching before watching the film. Taking that flaw aside, this is a fantastically presented and effectively simple documentary that captures the hectic and frightening environment the Korean protestors and lawmakers had to put themselves through to not just lift the martial law but fight back against the police and soldiers ordered by President Yoon to maintain it and take away democracy from the people. <\/p>\n

The Seoul Guardians has very little narration or exposition, as the filmmakers employ a \u201cshow, don\u2019t tell\u201d approach, with much of the movie consisting of footage shot by the crew that night during the martial law crisis. Outside of the occasional lines where a narrator adds extra context to fill in small gaps, the filmmakers simply present what happened that night as is and let the audience come to their own conclusions about what to take away from both the documentary and this historic moment.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is a wise choice because had there been unnecessary exposition or narration to make the documentary more \u201cinformative,\u201d it would have detracted from so many of the film\u2019s incredibly tense and chaotic moments featuring protestors and lawmakers yelling and fighting to keep their democracy alive. I cannot overstate just how on the edge of my seat I was while watching this movie. All the scenes where the lawmakers and their aides had to climb over walls and gates because the police refused to allow anyone into the building, or when the employees had to barricade and block doors and walls to prevent the soldiers from breaking into the National Assembly and stopping the vote to lift the martial law, genuinely left me both enthralled and angry at the same time. <\/p>\n

It was as if I were watching something ripped straight from a political thriller, except the scenes were real-life moments caught on camera, making them even more intense than any fictional adaptation could capture. This documentary does not give me a moment to breathe, as, while watching, I felt just as stressed as the protestors were that night. It\u2019s only when it reaches its climax (which is when the lawmakers finally unanimously vote to lift the martial law, causing the soldiers to back off) that it truly feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. <\/p>\n

The Seoul Guardians may employ a fly-on-the-wall approach to its presentation, but the filmmakers themselves are far from objective or unbiased observers. They are just as frustrated and involved in this struggle as the protestors are. While these feelings are evident in the narration\u2019s tone, they are especially apparent in scenes where the film explicitly draws parallels between this martial law crisis and the Gwangju Uprising. For anyone unfamiliar with the event, the Gwangju Uprising came about under shockingly similar circumstances as the then-President, Chun Doo-hwan, launched a coup and became the country\u2019s military dictator while also implementing martial law, accusing all political opponents and protestors of being North Korean or communist sympathizers. The filmmakers are not subtle in comparing the Gwangju Uprising with the 2024 martial law crisis, often cutting back and forth between modern and old footage whenever they see obvious similarities between the two events. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

One of the best examples of this is when the documentary presents footage of President Yoon declaring what is or isn\u2019t permitted under martial law, such as censoring the press and outlawing any supposed \u201cfake news\u201d or political gathering, while also labelling all opponents as North Korean communist sympathizers. This is followed by archival footage from 1979-1980, when martial law was imposed, leading to the Gwangju Uprising. The announcer declared the exact same rules, using almost identical wording, as in the 2024 version. This is such a well-executed moment because not only does it bridge the gap between the traumas of the past and the dangers of the present, but it also adds an extra layer of stakes to this crisis and why it was so important for the South Korean protestors to fight back. This has happened before, and people were brutally killed because of it. History cannot repeat itself no matter what, especially when that history wasn\u2019t that long ago, which makes the actions that the lawmakers and protestors took against the police and military so much more crucial and courageous.<\/p>\n

As much as I could continue rambling about my favorite scenes from this documentary, at the end of the day, it is a film that speaks for itself with very little fat or excess to obfuscate its goal. Clocking in at 72 minutes, this is a fairly short documentary feature that does not overstay its welcome, but will nonetheless remain in my memory for quite some time. The Seoul Guardians is a must-see documentary, and considering our current socio-political environment, we might need it now more than ever.<\/p>\n

Rating: 8\/10<\/p>\n

The Seoul Guardians had its Qu\u00e9bec premiere at Fantasia Fest<\/a> on July 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When I first became aware of The Seoul Guardians, directed by Kim Jong-Woo, Kim Shin-Wan, and Cho Chul-Young,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[19757,50221,50222,50223,10729,50220,8095,112,5830,25293],"class_list":["post-96550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-seoul","tag-anime","tag-bipoc-film-criticism","tag-bipoc-tv-reviews","tag-film-reviews","tag-gaming","tag-geeks-of-color","tag-pop-culture","tag-seoul","tag-streaming","tag-tv-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}