“Witty, playful, romantic, tragic…a whole chocolate box of emotions in a highly decorative wrapping” – Variety

An underseen and rarely screened offbeat romance from Park Chan-wook, the director of Oldboy and The Handmaiden, I’M A CYBORG BUT THAT’S OK is a surrealistic yet deeply empathetic study of mental illness that plays like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest if it were directed by Wes Anderson (in the best way possible). Firmly convinced she is a cyborg, Young-goon (Lim Soo-jung) plugs her body into an electrical outlet to recharge. She survives the electric shock and is admitted to a mental hospital, where the doctors assume she attempted suicide. There, she embarks on a search for the meaning of her existence as a human-machine: she receives signals from the radio, seeks advice from her bedside lamp, and converses with the vending machine. Since cyborgs don’t eat, she licks batteries to meet her energy needs. The doctors are at a loss. Only Il-sun (Rain), a fellow patient, gains access to the now severely malnourished patient, and a tender romance develops between them. A surprisingly tender outing from the filmmaker who gave us the notoriously brutal “Vengeance Trilogy,” I’M A CYBORG is charming, tender, and visually arresting.

In recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, Arkadin presents INSTITUTIONALIZED: MENTAL INSTITUTIONS ON FILM, a series of movies that depict asylums, sanitariums, and psychiatric hospitals — some with unvarnished realism, others with surrealism, whimsy or horror. At several screenings, academics and mental health experts will introduce the film with a talk that unpacks the film’s treatment of mental healthcare and provides context on the history of psychiatric institutions.

Arkadin does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. However, we encourage researching titles to determine if a screening may contain content that could be upsetting to you. Please feel free to contact us for guidance on specific films. Information about content can also be found on Common Sense Media, IMDB and DoesTheDogDie.com, as well as through general internet searches.