Taboo
Once a year, Bali falls silent.
For twenty four hours, no one leaves home.
No Travel.No fire. No food. No desire.
Nyepi, the Day of Silence, is meant to cleanse the island and give time for nature to heal. But this year, it coincides with sacred days when ancestral souls return, thinning the boundary between the living and the dead.
Four Korean tourists arrive, dismissing the island’s warnings as superstition. At a jungle temple, Taepyeong breaks a sacred urn marked with Nyepi’s taboos.
After that, something begins to follow them.
A woman in purple appears. No one else remembers her.
One by one, the group begins violating Nyepi’s taboos, as if possessed. Hunger turns feral. Desire turns grotesque. Light becomes fatal.
As Nyepi plunges the island into darkness, Taepyeong must confront both the dead and the living to save the woman he loves.
At dawn, the silence breaks.
But some spirits never leave.
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Park Kyung-kyunDirector
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Lee Soo-JinWriter
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Park Kyung-KyunWriter
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Jo Jae-MinWriter
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Kim Jung-WookCinemato Graphy
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Bae Jae-YounProducer
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Kwon Da-HamKey Cast"TAE-PYEONG"
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Hwang Ha-JungKey Cast"BIT-NA"
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Choi Tae-EunKey Cast"YUN-CHAE"
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Kim Woo-RinKey Cast"DANA"
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Lee Jeong-HoonKey Cast"NOVA"
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Dartyan DellaKey Cast"SHINTA"
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Tejo SujiwoKey Cast"WAYAN"
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Project Title (Original Language):Nyepi
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Project Type:Feature
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Runtime:1 hour 11 minutes 12 seconds
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Completion Date:October 15, 2025
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Production Budget:500,000,000 KRW
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Country of Origin:South Korea
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Country of Filming:Indonesia
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Language:English, Indonesian, Korean
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Shooting Format:Digital
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Aspect Ratio:2:1
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:Yes
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Student Project:No
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Digital Cinema Package:Unavailable
Distribution Information
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RED ICESales AgentCountry: South KoreaRights: All Rights
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JNC MEDIA GROUPDistributorCountry: South KoreaRights: All Rights
He majored in Film Directing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. He has directed three short films, including Metal Movie (2009), which was selected for the "Visions du Réel" section at the Mise-en-scène Short Film Festival, and Bad Trip (2016), which competed at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival.
Taboo(nyepi) explores the consequences of human arrogance when boundaries and sacred prohibitions are ignored.
Set against Bali’s Nyepi Day and its four taboos, the story follows characters who lose their identity and humanity as they give in to desire. Their transformations, along with the reversal of Shinta and Wayan’s true natures, blur the line between appearance and essence.
Ultimately, the film reflects on the fragile balance between desire and restraint, surface and truth, that defines what it means to be human.