South Korea has an unexpected new hit movie: the story of factory workers who became ill working for a company that looks a lot like the Korean giant Samsung.

South Korea’s Surprise Hit Film

South Korea has an unexpected new hit movie: the story of factory workers who became ill working for a company that looks a lot like the Korean giant Samsung

JEYUP S. KWAAK

Feb. 14, 2014 7:33 p.m. ET

South Korea has an unexpected new hit movie: the story of factory workers who became ill working for a company that looks a lot like the Korean giant Samsung. The makers of “Another Family”—the second-highest-grossing film to debut in South Korea last week—say it is based on the true story of a working-class family whose daughter contracted leukemia while working at a Samsung semiconductor factory and died of the disease in 2007.

Four years later, the Seoul Administrative Court ruled that toxic chemicals at the plant “had caused or, at least, expedited the illness” of two workers, including the daughter. The exact cause of their ailments wasn’t scientifically proven, the ruling said. The court dismissed similar claims by other workers, citing a lack of evidence.

Since then, the case has been pending in an appeals court. There are 39 other cases involving Samsung Electronics factories pending either in court or at South Korea’s state-run welfare agency, according to the labor rights lawyer representing them.

The film shows the father’s efforts to prove that chemicals used at his daughter’s workplace caused her and other workers to contract rare illnesses. The movie fictionalizes the names of the company and the characters.

“Another Family,” which cost about $2 million, including marketing and promotion, is also notable for another reason: Around 14% of its funding was crowdsourced, and over half came from more than 100 individual investors, said Park Sung-Il, a producer for the film.

That a film like “Another Family” could be made and distributed is a rare feat in Korea. Producers without major studio backing have few funding options. The country’s biggest conglomerates have close family and business ties with the major distributors and theater chains. Critics warn that these links may prevent films from being made if they depict these corporations negatively. Mr. Park said that the movie was allocated fewer screens than other feature films.

A Samsung spokesman declined to comment on the pending court cases and the movie’s content but described claims that the company had tried to influence the film’s production or limit its distribution as groundless.

After the premiere in the city of Busan, the filmmakers changed its Korean-language title to “Another Promise.” The English-language title remains “Another Family,” once a well-known slogan for Samsung in South Korea. Mr. Park says the new title was chosen to shift the focus to the father character’s quest for justice rather “than snipe at a certain company.”