Update2026.11.06 (금)
SEOUL — PRAYERS, a documentary exploring Korean religious culture, will premiere on June 24, 2026, at 2:00 PM at Sogang University’s Mary Hall in Seoul.
Directed by internationally acclaimed Lithuanian filmmaker Audrius Stonys, PRAYERS uses a poetic Baltic visual sensibility to capture contemporary Korean religious culture. Rather than focusing on institutions or doctrine, the film turns its gaze toward people—those who pray, perform rituals, and engage with the world through lived experience.
“Korean culture, history, and religion are deeply embedded in everyday life, making life itself a form of religious practice. We are filming religion, but our film tells the story of people.”
The film portrays religion not as a fixed system, but as lived experience expressed through gestures, voices, emotions, and relationships embedded in everyday life.
As K-pop, K-dramas, and K-culture have shaped Korea’s global image, PRAYERS extends this cultural flow into documentary cinema.
Bringing together a Lithuanian director, a Korean scholar-producer, and a Korean production team, the film reframes Korea through a global cinematic language. It presents Korean religious culture not as a fixed tradition, but as a living field of spiritual sensibility, ritual imagination, and everyday devotion.
In this sense, PRAYERS signals the emergence of K-documentary as a new cultural and intellectual horizon—linking cultural Hallyu with deeper interpretive frameworks of Korean life.
PRAYERS is an international co-production directed by Audrius Stonys (Woman and the Glacier, 2016), conceived by Byungseok Kam (In the Absence, 2018), and produced by Kyungsoo Han of Argus Film (My Love, Don’t Cross That River, 2014; Hanwha Eagles: Clubhouse, 2022).
The collaboration brings together distinct cinematic traditions, resulting in a documentary that neither relies on external curiosity nor internal explanation, but emerges from field encounters with Korean religious life.
The film is a major outcome of the K-Academic Diffusion Research Institute Project (2021–2026), led by the Korean Studies Promotion Service at the Academy of Korean Studies under the Ministry of Education.
The project aims to expand global interest in K-culture into broader academic engagement with Korean Studies, including history, philosophy, religion, and the arts.
The Sogang University Academic Center for K-Religions (ACKR) has led the religious studies component through online lectures and field-based documentary content. PRAYERS is the culmination of this initiative.
The academic version of the film will be distributed to universities and public libraries worldwide as an educational and research resource on Korean religious culture.
The academic version of PRAYERS will premiere at 2:00 PM on June 24, 2026, at Sogang University’s Mary Hall, followed by a post-screening conversation with the director and production team.
The event is held in conjunction with ISARS 2026 SEOUL (June 24–27), the 17th International Conference of the International Society for Academic Research on Shamanism. The conference will gather participants from 36 countries, including scholars, filmmakers, artists, and ritual practitioners.
The Korean organizing committee includes Sogang University Institute for the Study of Religion, ACKR, the Korean Folklore Society, the Korean Society of Shamanic Studies, and the Center for Folklore Studies at Seoul National University.
During the conference, PRAYERS will be screened daily, accompanied by discussions on documentary practice, shamanism, visual anthropology, and the documentation of religious culture.
PRAYERS responds to a growing global interest in understanding Korea beyond surface-level cultural consumption. It presents Korean religious life not as tradition alone, but as a living field of meaning shaped by prayer, ritual, and everyday spirituality.
In doing so, it connects K-culture with K-academics and K-religions, positioning documentary film as a new language for understanding Korea in depth.
Website: https://www.isars2026.com/
