Jun 27, 2014 By Austin Trunick

Snowpiercer, the English-language debut of South Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Mother), opens in U.S. theaters this week. The film takes place 17 years after a government-sanctioned effort to curtail global warming backfires and leaves the surface of the Earth a lifeless, ice-covered wasteland. The only humans who survived were the ones who sought refuge on the Snowpiercer, an immense train endlessly circling the globe at high speeds.

Bong Joon-ho has delivered one of the most strange and visually-arresting dystopias we’ve seen since Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, and easily one of the most imaginative sci-fi action flicks in years. The filmmaker sat down with us to talk about Snowpiercer’s journey to the screen. More