South Korea's 2023 entry for the Oscars finds the survivors of a massive earthquake congregate to the last apartment building left standing in Seoul. The world has been reduced to rubble by a massive earthquake. No one knows how far the ruins stretch, or what the cause of the earthquake may be, but there is one apartment building left standing in the heart of Seoul. As time passes, outsiders come to the Hwang Gung Apartments to escape the cold and the devastation. Before long, the original residents find themselves unable to cope with the increasing numbers of refugees. Feeling threatened, they enact special measures. Programmer's note: If the South Korean film industry has mastered the blockbuster, director Um Tae-hwa (INGtoogi: The Battle of Internet Trolls) reinvents it for our particular end times. Drawing from the disaster epics of Roland Emmerich, the social critique of a Bong Joon-ho (Snowpiercer, Parasite) or the acerbic prose of a J.G. Ballard (whose perennial novel High-Rise is an obvious touchstone on the film’s electrifying single-location premise) Concrete Utopia is the feel-bad blockbuster of the season and a compelling argument for timely, big screen spectacle. —Ariel Esteban Cayer Australian Premiere