Commission screened at the London Korean Film Festival, 13th Nov, 2025. This is the text of my live introduction.
You wait for one film about a woman chasing her dreams of becoming a celebrated webtoon artist, and two come along. Indeed there are two such films in this year’s Cinema Now strand. In Jang Man-min’s Silver Apricot, which we screened last Sunday, 32-year-old Jeong-seo works in an office by day and designs vampire-themed digital cartoons by night, and in negotiating between these activities and the demands of her dysfunctional family, she struggles to determine who she is and what she wants. Whereas in Shin Jae-min’s debut feature Commission, the younger Dan-kyeong (Kim Hyun-soo) must contend with her more successful older sister Joo-kyeong (Kim Yong-ji), as well as with her own lack of confidence to work out what sort of artist she wants to be, and whether she has any real talent and individual voice in the first place.
Commission is not an anime, but it does begin with a semi-animated sequence, reflective of Dan-kyeong’s chosen artistic form. This sequence, set in Dan-kyeong’s childhood, is the primal scene of her disillusionment and doubt. For it shows Dan-kyeong at a very young age entering an art contest that makes her momentarily feel ‘special’, but when she wins, it is only because Joo-kyeong has altered and added splashes of colour to her drawing, so that Dan-kyeong realises then and there that she will always be in the shadow of her sister.
Now aged 23, Dan-kyeong is still living what is essentially that same story. For she is working as a lowly assistant teacher at an art academy, and constantly doubts her own abilities or talent, while her dream of becoming a webtoon artist is actually being lived by Joo-kyeong, whose first webtoon has made her an overnight superstar in the scene, and won her a coveted contract with big publishers NEOTOON.
Joo-kyeong’s breakout webtoon was called Night and Day. Indeed Dan-kyeong will soon find herself divided between those two times, spending her days as a colourist for someone else’s webtoon, and her nights moonlighting on more specialist private commissions which bring out her own individual style. That phrase ‘night and day’ might also describe the relationship between Dan-kyeong and Joo-kyeong, who are, at least superficially, like chalk and cheese: the one messy and mousy, the other more assured and coolly professional. For this is to be a tale of two sisters – and as Dan-kyeong works out just how similar to, and different from, her older sister she is, and as she tries to find her own true colours, the film’s disentangling of this sibling rivalry will eventually lead both sisters to some very dark places.
Commission is an increasingly intense and twisty psychological thriller, although I will not spoil here by saying how exactly. Yet it is also, from the start and throughout, a film about artists and art, as we see all the frustrations and disappointments, all the rivalries and jealousies, all the pains and plagiarisms, all the nerdiness, neediness and narcissism, all the blocks and breakthroughs, all the aloof callousness and cutthroat competition, of the creative process itself writ large, where harsh reality and dark fantasy – indeed where blood and ink – are not always so easy to distinguish. As such, this is also a reflexive film about its own making and its own anxious form, tracing the shadowy edges of the imagination that must be explored by all artists, whether webtoonists or filmmakers, if they wish to get noticed, to acquire fame (or at least notoriety) and at last to make a name for themselves by any means possible.
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My programme note: Assistant art teacher Kang Dan-kyeong (Kim Hyun-soo) longs for a career and fame as a webtoon artist, but is in the shadow of her ‘genius’ older sister Joo-kyeong (Kim Yong-ji). When Dan-kyeong starts working as colourist for legendary older webtooner Mok Jin-pil (Seo Doung-hyun), she is also drawn into doing hardcore illustrations for private clients on the dark web. When the mysterious Hannyakun (Kim Jin-woo) commissions gory murder scenes from her, he helps Dan-kyeong find her voice, her calling and the recognition that she craves, even as he is inspired in turn to recreate her art in the real world.
Structured as a serial killer thriller, Shin Jae-min’s sophisticated psychodrama stages the creative process itself in all its pain and plagiarism, its nerdiness and narcissism, its cutthroat competitiveness and dark fantasy. Here sibling rivalry outlines the tension, jealousy and ambition that drives art – even art of an underground, confessional kind.
strap: Shin Jae-min’s feature debut is a twisty psychodrama of sibling rivalry, celebrity and serial killing, all sublimated as art
© Anton Bitel
