BY THE STREAM (SUYOOCHEON)
DIRECTOR: Hong Sangsoo
111 MINS, south korea, 2024, SUBTITLED
Official Selection, Locarno International Film Festival 2024;
Jeonim (Kim Minhee), an artist and art teacher at an all-girl’s university in Seoul, sketches patterns in her notebook at a nearby stream each day, which she later weaves into her textile artworks. Jeonim is helping with the university’s annual skit festival, and when student director Junwon gets into a tricky situation involving several students, Jeonim calls upon her uncle Chu Sieon (Kwon Haehyo), a famous former actor to direct her students’ play. While there he encounters an admirer, the school senior Professor Jong (Cho Yunhee) and a new friendship develops. Kim Minhee won the Best Actress prize at the Locarno Film Festival for this wonderful composed meditation on life’s regrets and retrospection, a bittersweet film from one of our festival’s favourite directors, Hong Sangsoo.
(NOTES BY MARIE-PIERRE RICHARD)
