Screening times:
Friday, November 11, 7:00 PM - Half-capacity screening
Saturday, November 12, 7:00 PM - Half-capacity screening
Hong Sangsoo | Korea | 2022 | 92m | Korean with English subtitles
with Lee Hyeyoung, Kim Minhee
Junhee (Lee Hyeyoung) is a novelist who has grown disenchanted with her own writing. On a trip to see an old friend, she runs into a film director who was set to adapt one of her novels before the project fell through. One chance encounter leads to another and soon she finds herself having lunch with Kilsoo (Kim Minhee), a well-known actress also questioning her role as an artist. It’s then that Junhee has an epiphany: she will make a film starring Kilsoo. It won’t be like other films. It will be the novelist’s film.
For his 27th feature, Hong holds a mirror up to his own artistic process and asks what exactly it is we’re looking for from a work of art. As his characters discuss their lives and work and the ways they intertwine, Hong sets down a sort of manifesto for his own inimitable oeuvre before exploding it (or perhaps fully realizing it) in a moving final flourish. With sparkling performances from Lee, Kim and an incredible cast of Hong regulars, The Novelist’s Film is a summation of Hong’s career-long artistic project, even as it signals bold new directions.
"A Chekhovian study in small moments and chance encounters, which is to say it is a study of human beings as they really live: ambiguously and without exposition, spontaneously and without tidy motives or resolution." -Austin Considine, New York Times
"The Novelist’s Film pays stunning tribute to Kim’s ability to inspire, both as the character of Gilsoo and as herself, and as such, feels particularly poignant." -Lee Jutton, Film Inquiry
"The Novelist’s Film is straightforwardly chronological and naturalistic, but that makes it no less intricate or sophisticated a reflection on the nature of movies, both intellectual and practical." -Richard Brody, New Yorker
Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize - Berlin International Film Festival 2022
Tickets $8.75 ($8 at the door if available).
Half capacity
Half capacity
