“The Front Line,” the official South Korean foreign language entry for the 84th Academy Awards, will be in theaters January 20.

The film, directed by Jang Hun and starring Shin Ha-Kyun, Ko Soo and Kim Ok-Bin, tells the story of a South Korean battalion battling on the front line border against North Korea in order to capture a strategic point that would redefine the new border between the North and the South.

“When making the film, I wanted to show a real front line battle,”said Jang. “I used to think that I already knew all about the Korean War, but that thought was gone when I read the screenplay. This film is different from previous war movies as the story takes place entirely on the battlefield with vivid images of war, as if we are all actually standing on the battlefield itself.”

“Everyone knows that the Korean War began on June 25, 1950 and ended in July 1953,” said Park Sang-yeon, the writer of the screenplay. “The records about the war only talk about the South Korea’s retreat on January 4, 1951 and the armistice negotiation. But there were enormously fierce battles during the two years and two months of the negotiation. The records don’t talk about how the war ended. ‘The Front Line’ is a story about the end of the Korean War.”

You can learn more about the film at its official website.

By Monique Jones