By Aisylu Akhmetzianova and Yoon Hee Young
Video = Busan International Film Festival's official YouTube channel

A joint Korean-Kazakh film directed by a Goryeoin, or an ethnic Korean from Central Asia, will be released in Kazakhstan late this month.

Yonhap News of Korea on March 13 quoted Koryo Business Networks, a group formed by ethnic Korean entrepreneurs from Central Asia, as saying the film "Three," directed by fourth-generation Goryeoin Pak Ruslan, 41, and jointly produced by Korea and Kazakhstan, will be released on March 31 in the Central Asian country.

The group said the movie will be the first commercial film jointly produced by the two nations to be screened in the Commonwealth of Independent States including Russia.

In October 2020, "Three" won the "New Currents" award at the 25th Busan International Film Festival in a category that seeks to discover and encourage new and talented directors in Asia.

Director Pak is the first Goryeoin to win an award from the festival.

Majoring in film at Korean National University of Arts in Seoul, he made his cinematic debut in 2012 with "Hanaan" and has since made nearly 10 documentaries and movies on Goryeoin.

"Three" was also shown last year at the 43rd Moscow International Film Festival and the ninth Muju Film Festival of Korea.

In an interview with the Kazakh film site Broadway (brod.kz), Pak said, "Though this film is based on a serial murder case in the Soviet Union around 40 years ago, the story is more about the police officers investigating the case than the serial murders themselves."

Yonhap added that shooting for the film took about a year, with Korean and Kazakh staff traveling back and forth between their two countries.

Scene from "Three" (Official site of Busan International Film Festival)