Hong Sang-soo
A female novelist takes a long trip to visit a bookstore run by a younger colleague who has fallen out of touch.
A middle-aged film director and the daughter he hasn't seen in years visit a building owned by an interior designer. They have come because the daughter also hopes to study interior design. The designer takes them up floor by floor to show them the renovations she has done. The three of them go into the rooms on each floor to look around. After the film begins in this way, we start again at the bottom and ascend one floor at a time.
Partly shot in Berlin, the film follows a young man who tries to find his way in the face of his parents’ wishes and impositions.
a short film about the award ceremony at the last Berlinale and then also about a snail.
Hong Sangsoo's short film made for the 59th edition of the New York Film Festival.
While her husband is on a business trip, Gamhee meets three of her friends on the outskirts of Seoul. They make friendly conversation, as always, but there are different currents flowing independently of each other, both above and below the surface.
An old poet staying for free in a riverside hotel summons his two estranged sons. This is because he feels, for no apparent reason, like he is going to die. After being betrayed by the man she was living with, a young woman gets a room at the hotel. Seeking support, she summons a friend. The poet spends a day with his sons and tries to wrap up the loose ends in his life. But it's not so easy to do that in one day. But then he sees the young woman and her friend, after a sudden, unbelievably heavy snowfall.
On a business trip to the Cannes Film Festival, Manhee is accused of being dishonest, and fired. A teacher named Claire goes around taking photos with a Polaroid camera. She gets to know Manhee and sympathizes with her. Through taking photos, Claire has acquired the ability to look slowly at things, and to transform objects.
On her first day at work, Areum replaces a woman who broke up with the boss. The wife of the boss finds a love note, bursts into the office, and mistakes Areum for the other woman.
An actress wanders around a seaside town, pondering her relationship with a married man.
Painter Youngsoo hears secondhand that his girlfriend, Minjung, has recently had drinks with an unknown man. This leads to a quarrel that seems to end their relationship. The next day, Youngsoo sets out in search of her, at the same time that Minjung—or a woman who looks exactly like her and may or may not be her twin—has a series of encounters with strange men, some of whom claim to have met her before.
Quite by accident, a film director arrives in town a day early. With time to kill before his lecture, he stops by a restored palace and meets a fledgling artist. She’s never seen any of his films, but knows he’s famous. They talk, they go to her workshop to look at her paintings, and they have sushi and soju. More conversation follows, along with more drinks, and then an awkward get-together with friends where all sorts of secrets are revealed. All the while, they may or may not be falling for each other. Then, quite unexpectedly, we begin again, but now things appear somewhat different.
A Japanese man arrives in Korea to find his old lover. While he stays at a guest house, he encounters various people.
Sunhi from the Department of Film stops by the school one day to get a letter of recommendation from Professor Choi to leave to the US. She expects him to write her a nice one since he took favor to her. She runs into two men from the past she's never met in a long time; Moon-soo, a recently turned movie director and senior director Jae-hak.
Haewon, a college student, wants to end her secret affair with her professor, Seongjun. Feeling depressed after bidding farewell to her mother who is set to immigrate to Canada the next day, Haewon seeks out Seongjun again after a long time. That day, they run into her classmates at a restaurant and their relationship gets revealed. Haewon gets more agitated and Seongjun makes an extreme suggestion to run away together… Haewon dreams often. Her dreams will be compared to her waking life, but none can be denied as being a part of her life.
Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.
Prominent film critic Tony Rayns has long been a supporter of Korean cinema. This film illustrates Rayns’ affection for Korean cinema through interviews of Korean cineastes that have a special affinity for him, including JANG Sun-woo, LEE Chang-dong and HONG Sang-soo among others.
A three-tiered story centered on a trio of French tourists visiting the same seaside resort.
Sang-Joon is a professor in the film department at a provincial university. He goes to Seoul to meet his senior, Young-Ho, who works as a film critic. Sang-Joon stays in a northern village in Seoul for 3 days.
Over a slice of chocolate cake, a mother and daughter tensely discuss the good-for-nothing relative whose money troubles have brought them to the seaside town of Mohang. For now they have nothing to do but wait, so the younger woman, Mihye, composes a list of goals for her involuntary vacation — a list which she seems to fulfill almost accidentally, as she and her mother wander, eat, drink, and meet with fate, here in the form of a clumsily flirtatious film director.
A love story between a middle aged professor, a young female student who prepares a movie and a student/filmmaker who drinks too much.
Delightfully comic exploration of the emotional and social geography of an art-house film director.
Hong Sang-soo’s Lost in the Mountains depicts Misook’s suffering when she discovers her friend Jin-Young has been secretly sleeping with her lover.
Hong Sang-Soo’s Lost in the Mountains (South Korea, 32min) the visitor is the supremely self-centred Mi-Sook, who drives to Jeonju on impulse to see her classmate Jin-Young – only to discover that her friend is having an affair with their married professor, who Mi-Sook once dated herself. The level of social embarrassment goes off the scale. In Naomi Kawase’s Koma (Japan, 34min), Kang Jun-Il travels to a village in rural Japan to honour his grandfather’s dying wish by returning a Buddhist scroll to its ancestral home. Amid ancient superstitions, a new relationship forms. And in Lav Diaz’ Butterflies Have No Memories (Philippines, 42min) ‘homecoming queen’ Carol returns to the economically depressed former mining town she came from – and becomes the target of an absurd kidnapping plot hatched by resentful locals. Serving as his own writer, cameraman and editor, Diaz casts the film entirely from members of his crew and delivers a well-seasoned mix of social realism and fantasy. —bfi
Kim Seong-nam travels to Paris to escape an arrest, leaving his wife behind in Korea. After he arrives, he meets an ex-girlfriend and is introduced to a small community of Korean artists.
South Korean cinema is in the throes of a creative explosion where mavericks are encouraged and masters are venerated. But from where has this phenomenon emerged? What is the culture that has yielded this range of filmmakers? With The Nine Lives of Korean Cinema, French critic, writer and documentarian Hubert Niogret provides a broad overview but, nevertheless, an excellent entry point into this unique type of national cinema that still remains a mystery for many people. The product of a troubled social and political history, Korean cinema sports an identity that is unique in much modern film. Niogret's documentary tells of the country's cinematic history - the ups along with the downs - and gives further voice to the artists striving to express their concerns, fears and aspirations.
Stymied by writer's block while crafting his latest script, director Kim Jung-rae persuades his friend Won Chang-wook to drive him to a beach resort—where he promptly becomes involved with Chang-wook's girlfriend. Abandoning her and taking up with another woman, Jung-rae winds up creating enough drama to inspire his writing.
In Seoul, the paths of two men and one woman intersect and move apart from one another, centering around their love for cinema. A suicidal student meets a young woman who decides to follow him in his fatal gesture. Coming out of a cinema, Tongsu, an unsuccessful filmmaker, spots a beautiful young woman, and recognizes her : she is the main actress in the film he has just seen. The life of this wavering and distressed young man strangely echoes the one of the young man from the beginning...
As the first snow falls in Seoul, two old friends reunite; one is a successful college professor, and the other, a struggling filmmaker recently returned from the United States. After their reminiscences, they finally decide to go in search of the young woman each had romanced years earlier.
Actor Gyung-soo is passed over for a part and decides to leave Seoul and visit a friend. His friend tells him the legend of the "Turning Gate," which foreshadows future events. During his visit, Gyung-soo meets Myung-sook, a girl who quickly falls for him. After a night of passion, he boards the train back for Seoul and meets a married woman who claims to know him. Gyung-soo thinks he may be in love with her, but perhaps he's chosen the wrong woman.
Wealthy Jae-hoon meets attractive writer Soo-jung through their mutual friend, filmmaker Young-soo. While Jae-hoon tries to pursue a romance with Soo-jung, things get complicated when it becomes apparent that Young-soo also has feelings for the young woman.
Recently separated lovers have a series of close encounters at a popular mountain retreat.
A novelist has an affair with two women, finding fulfillment in neither; a married businessman strays from his wife he can't satisfy; a naive young woman surrenders her dignity for her lover; and a married woman tries to find solace in a frustrating affair.
