South Korean film-maker Park Chan-wook is wielding a new cinematic tool: the iPhone.

Park, director of Oldboy, Lady Vengeance and Thirst, said his new fantasy-horror film Paranmanjang was shot entirely on Apple's ubiquitous smartphone.

"The new technology creates strange effects because it is new and because it is a medium the audience is used to," Park has said.

Compared with other movie cameras, the phone was good, he said, "because it is light and small and because anyone can use it".

Paranmanjang, which means "a life full of ups and downs" in Korean, is about a man transcending his current and former lives. He catches a woman while fishing in a river in the middle of the night. They both end up entangled in the line and he thinks she is dead.

Suddenly, though, she wakes up, strangles him and he passes out. When the woman awakens him, she is wearing his clothing and he hers. She cries and calls him "Father".

The movie, made on a budget of 150m won (£85,500), was shot using the iPhone 4 and is scheduled to open in South Korean cinemas on 27 January. Park made the 30-minute movie with his younger brother Park Chan-kyong, who said a wide variety of angles and edits were possible because numerous cameras could be used.

Oldboy, a blood-soaked thriller about a man out for revenge after years of inexplicable imprisonment, took second place at the 2004 Cannes film festival. Vampire romance Thirst shared the third-place award at Cannes in 2009.