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The action genre loves a retiree getting pulled back into the fray to do some violence. From The Equalizer to A History of Violence to Pig, it’s undeniable how compelling and even endearing audiences find a normal, peaceful life giving way to the violent origins that shaped it. 2022’s The Killer is a frenetic but fluid—and surprisingly warm—entry into the subgenre. The Killer follows Bang Ui-gang (Jang Hyuk), a man of few words with a dry sense of humor and a quiet caffeine addiction. The inciting incident that calls Bang out of domestic bliss and back into the criminal underworld? His wife Hyeon-soo (Lee Chae-young) asks him to babysit.

Arriving at the tail end of a creatively fertile and financially lucrative decade or so for South Korean entertainment, with cinema being a key aspect of this boom, the domestic films presented at the 2023 Jeonjun International Film Festival took on an extra level of significance. It was hard not to look at these selections, mostly feature debuts, as a bellwether of this influential national film industry’s development over the upcoming years.

The trials and tribulations of the film industry itself were the focus of some of the Korean competition’s best entries, such as Yoo Heong-jun’s Regardless of Us. At once mundane and elliptical, the film is most effective in its opening stretch, which sees middle-aged actress Hwa-ryeong (Cho Hyunjin) being visited at a hospital by colleagues from her most recent production, including the director and producer. She’s recovering from a stroke, and her condition seems to...