Handball ‘Sleeper’ Tops Box Office for Third Week

“Forever the Moment” tops box office figures for a third consecutive week. MK Pictures, the film’s producer, said Tuesday that the film has drawn 2.64 million viewers since its release on Jan. 10. It is based on the real story of the Korean women’s handball team, which won the silver medal in the Athens Olympics in 2004 after a neck-and-neck game with the world’s no. 1 Denmark that ran for 128 minutes including double overtime and a shoot-out.

Directed by Lim Soon-rye, who also made “Waikiki Brothers” (2001), “Forever the Moment” stars Moon So-ri, Kim Jung-eun, Kim Ji-young, and Cho Eun-ji as players and Uhm Tae-woong as the coach.

From left, Moon So-ri, Kim Jung-eun, Kim Ji-young, and Cho Eun-ji, the stars of the film ‘Forever the Moment.’

A sports movie on the surface, it is actually a human drama dealing with the life of people on the fringe of society. Few people expected the success of a film dealing with an unpopular sport and including no stars in its cast. In fact, producers had such difficulties attracting investors that they were unable to raise the entire budget until preview.

With a preliminary re-match in women’s handball for the Beijing Olympics in Japan after the International Handball Federation found that Korea was victimized by an unfair referee’s decision in Asian preliminaries earlier in August, the movie was shown in Japan by the Korean Culture Center in Tokyo for local Korean residents and students. Kim Jung-eun attended the event to encourage Korean players.