↓
Hong Sangsoo
With over 30 films to his name, Hong Sangsoo (South Korea, 1960) is one of the most established auteurs in contemporary cinema, renowned for his unique cinematic language and distinctive aesthetic. Like bittersweet sonatas, his works blend humour with profound explorations of everyday life, psychology, and metaphysics in playful and elegant ways. With each film, Hong Sangsoo traces an ever-subtly changing pattern of variations on the same narrative threads, gradually shaping a broader philosophy of life that unfolds across his oeuvre.
After studying filmmaking in both Seoul and the United States, Hong Sangsoo first gained international attention in 1996 with The Day a Pig Fell into the Well. His next film The Power of Kangwon Province (1998) marked his debut at Cannes, where he would become a regular presence. Over the years, he has earned numerous international awards and accolades, including at Cannes, the Berlinale, Locarno and San Sebastián. Alongside his role as a professor of screenwriting and directing in Seoul, he remains one of the most inventive and prolific filmmakers active today.
Accompanied by his daughter, film director Byungsoo visits an old friend in her four-storey building. After a phone call pulls Byungsoo away, he returns to the same place – only now it is a different time, and a higher floor.
While at the Cannes Film Festival, Manhee, a young film sales assistant, is abruptly fired by her boss due to unspecified “dishonesty”. When she meets Claire, a teacher with a Polaroid camera that may hold unusual powers, the two try to make sense of Manhee’s firing.
Film director Ham Chunsu arrives in Suwon a day too early and meets young painter Yoon Heejung. They spend the day visiting her studio, drinking soju and meeting her friends, in a fragile game of attraction, until things turn sour. And then everything starts again.
A film director who no longer makes films arrives in Seoul to meet a close friend. When the friend doesn’t show up, he wanders the city for three days, drinking and meeting a series of women, each day playing out like a variation of the last.