Korean actor Song Kang-ho will play the lead role in an upcoming film about the Gwangju Uprising, tentatively titled “Taxi Driver,” production company The Lamp announced Tuesday.

The film is based on a real story by Jurgen Hinzpeter, a German journalist who filmed and reported the May 18 Democratic Uprising in Gwangju in 1980. It will depict the story of Hinzpeter and a taxi driver who helped him take the video recording of the massacre in Gwangju out of the city, evading the government troops.

Hinzpeter received the Song Kun-ho Journalism Prize in 2003 for his efforts and he mentioned the courageous taxi driver Kim Sa-bok then. 

Hinzpeter, who died on Jan. 25 at the age of 79, had left his nail clippings and hair when he visited Gwangju in 2005. The remains will be buried in a grave at Mangwol-dong, Gwangju, where victims of the brutal crackdown of the uprising are laid to rest, according to his wishes.

Song will play the main character taxi driver Kim, and actors Yu Hae-jin and Ryu Jun-yeol will also star in the film.

The movie will begin filming in May, and is scheduled for release next year.

By Jung Eun-jin (jej2403@heraldcorp.com)