At last year’s Cannes Film Festival, the Korean film industry presented its artistic face. Jeon Do-yeon took home the Best Actress prize for her work as a young woman who loses first her husband, then her son, then her faith in Lee Chang-dong’s “Secret Sunshine,” which screened along with Kim Ki-duk’s “Breath” in the fest’s official competition. This year, two genre films — a serial killer thriller, “The Chaser,” and a wacky action-adventure western, “The Good, The Bad, The Weird” — a short directed by Bong Joon-ho (“The Host”), and a newly restored 1960 psychological suspense tale revealed an altogether different, more mainstream, but no less vital facet of Korean cinema.

 

Here’s a rundown of the Korean films at this year’s festival:

 

“The Chaser”

Director: Na Hong-jin

Kim Yoon-suk (“The Happy Life”) plays Jung-ho, a former cop turned pimp who pursues a serial killer (Ha Jung-woo, “Time and Breath”) with a crucifixion fetish. Based loosely on the true story of Yu Yeong-cheol, “The Chaser” sold more than 5 million tickets in Korea this spring and is now set for a Hollywood remake. The 34-year-old first-time director insisted on shooting all his film’s many night scenes in the residential district where most of the killings took place five years ago. “The neighborhood was in an uproar, everyone protesting the shoot,” Na reported. “But I had my principles, so I just ignored all that interference!”

 

“The Good, The Bad, The Weird”

Director: Kim Jee-woon

A $20 million special-effects extravaganza, “The Good, The Bad, The Weird” is part “Indiana Jones”-like action-adventure film, part throw-back to the “Manchurian Western” popular among Korean moviegoers in the 1960s and ‘70s. The period film unites three of Korea’s top male actors: Song Kang-ho (“The Host”) plays an emotional, unpredictable train robber who rides a motor-scooter’s sidecar instead of a horse; Lee Byung-hun (“A Bittersweet Life”), a cold-blooded but old-fashioned gang boss who prefers knives to guns; and Jung Woo-sung (“The Restless”), a laconic bounty hunter. These three, along with the Japanese army and Mongolian bandits, roam the Chinese deserts circa 1930 in search of a map that promises to lead to untold treasure.

 

“Shaking Tokyo”

Director: Bong Joon-ho

Bong’s 35-minute short, the final segment of an anthology film called “Tokyo!” is set in the title city and features Japanese stars Kagawa Terayuki and Yu Aoi. Bong, best known for the policier “Memories of Murder” and the sci-fi megahit “The Host,” delivers here a subtly sweet love story about two obsessively organized, recluses, known as Japanese hikikomori. Here’s how Bong describes the story’s origins: “Though Tokyo is a huge city with high population density and tiny houses, the Japanese try not to touch each other, even on crowded subways. And it’s common to see customers eating alone in Tokyo restaurants. They all seem quite lonely to me. The hikikomori is an extreme case I wanted to explore.”