Paradise Lost

ThrillerScience Fiction

★ Shortlisted by Ariane, Sharon

Programme: Special Presentations
Year: 2026
Runtime: 101 min
Country: South Korea
Language: Korean
Premiere: World Premiere

From the TIFF programme

A bus full of children mysteriously vanishes. When an altered version of a grieving mother’s son returns years later, she must grapple with the technologically revised reality she has created in this sharp thriller from Yeon Sang-ho.

Director Yeon Sang-ho (Hellbound, TIFF ’21; The Ugly, TIFF ’25) evokes the suspenseful story of Ryu (Kim Hyun-joo), a mother devastated by the loss of her son who mysteriously vanished along with a busload of fellow campers, leaving parents with profound grief but no answers about what happened to their children.

A new technology company offers unusual comfort with augmented reality glasses able to create a near-lifelike version of the missing children, giving grieving parents simulated interactions with those they lost. But living with angelic memories of Ryu’s son conjured by the glasses are disrupted by strange new events linked to the bus tragedy. The artificial reality she created is shattered with the arrival of disturbing truths about her real son.

Paradise Lost is a complex and at times frightening exploration of human darkness and trauma, provoking questions about motherhood, love, and responsibility in a gripping psychological thriller. From his zombie classic Train to Busan to The Colony, Yeon Sang-ho is a vanguard voice in Korean genre storytelling today.

ANITA LEE

Content advisory: accident trauma, mature themes, coarse language