KJCKorea
Journal Central

This paper takes the Korean film New Trial and the Chinese film Article 20 as comparative cases to examine how contemporary Korean and Chinese judicial films construct the legitimacy of law through different cinematic mechanisms. While previous studies have largely focused on individual works, comparatively few have analyzed these two films together from a comparative perspective. Accordingly, this study combines comparative textual analysis with audiovisual narrative analysis to investigate the two films across four dimensions: spatial organization, temporal rhythm, character function, and emotional rhetoric. The analysis shows that both films reflect a broader shift in judicial cinema from institutional critique to the reconstruction of institutional trust, yet they differ clearly in their specific pathways. New Trial constructs a mode of “procedural restoration” through retrial procedures, a structure of waiting, and a restrained directorial style, whereas Article 20 builds a form of “emotional governance” through domesticated space, everyday-oriented narrative, mechanisms of empathy, and visual rhetoric. In this sense, judicial cinema does not merely represent legal issues, but also actively participates in the visual construction of legal legitimacy.

New Trial, Article 20, procedural restoration, emotional governance, legal legitimacy, judicial cinema