Tales of Cinema: The World of Hong Sangsoo

July 27–August 17, 2024

Few contemporary directors have amassed as vast and prolific a body of work as Hong Sangsoo. Working at an unparalleled pace, the South Korean auteur has helmed 25 of his 27 narrative features this century. Each is a valuable addition to an oeuvre that returns time and again to the same themes, preoccupations, and strategies, but always with a fresh angle and a radically new way of telling a familiar story. Hong’s films seize the material of everyday life—regret, infidelity, professional frustrations, the casual cruelty and brutish folly of men and women alike—in the service of exploring psychology and metaphysics in elegant and subtly profound ways.  
 
This career retrospective was originally organized by Dennis Lim and Dan Sullivan and is made possible in Washington thanks to the generous support of the National Museum of Korea. Co-presented with the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art and the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. All notes courtesy of Film at Lincoln Center. All formats DCP unless otherwise noted.