Busan film festival hit Fanatic’s director on the K-pop fans it features who – like her – fell in love with celebrities later convicted of crimes, and their mixed feelings afterwards
- In Fanatic, film student Oh Se-yeon talks to fellow former fans of Korean stars accused of crimes who are ‘suffering more because they’d loved’ them
- She started the project out of anger, she admits, but the conversations Oh has with her friends and other fans are heartfelt, contemplative and often funny
What does it mean to be a fan of someone who turns out to be a criminal?
That’s what South Korean film student Oh Se-yeon wanted to explore in her debut documentary Fanatic, which was a surprise success at the 2021 Busan International Film Festival (Biff) in October.
“It was so touching for me to present the film at Biff with the audience,” Oh, 22, tells the Post. “We laughed and cried together.”
That is more or less the point of Fanatic, which is described on the film festival’s site as a comedic true-story documentary exploring the lives and feelings of female former fans who are “suffering more because they’d loved” male South Korean celebrities.
Fanatic was created to understand fan behaviours and to serve as a coping mechanism. The film’s different names in Korean and English reflect its multifaceted nature: Fanatic is also known as Seongdeok, the Korean term for a “successful fan”.
