In the dystopian post-war ”United Korea,” mutated mermen called Omegas are society’s outcasts–-exploited as cheap labor in an ecologically decimated, water-poor landscape. As one of these pariahs dies of over-exertion, he tasks a colleague (Goh-woo) with finding his daughter Mia (Yeon Yeji) hiding among humans, so she may receive his fin in a rite of passing. Meanwhile, Sujin (Kim Pureum), a young civil servant, begins doubting the state’s ideology as she pursues the Omega for her own purposes.

With The Fin, director Park Syeyoung (The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra) emerges with a unique eye for artful, experimental genre cinema. This vision of societal collapse unfolds as a formalist’s fever dream pitched between Guy Maddin and Konstantin Lopushansky, pushing the boundaries of digital cinema with expressionistic, richly saturated images, capturing the contours of post-industrial decay, in an impressive feat of worldbuilding. A potent critique of xenophobia and South Korea’s reckless economic growth despite dawning ecological, economic and geopolitical challenges, The Fin reinvigorates South Korean independent cinema, light years ahead of its more formulaic tendencies.