South Korean director Hong Sang-soo's latest film, “By the Stream” (also known as “Suyoocheon”), is set to hit theaters in North America next year.
Brooklyn-based distributor Cinema Guild acquired the film rights from Seoul, Korea-based sales agent Finecut. The two companies have handled many of the director's previous works.
The film is set to have its world premiere in competition at the Locarno Film Festival this month. It will then screen at the New York Film Festival, with additional festival locations expected to be announced in the coming weeks.
Hong is known for his simple, low-budget dramas that rely on dialogue, random encounters and female leads, and he likes to work with a tight-knit circle of actors.
The new film is Hong's 32nd, and he returns to the campus setting of films like “Oki Movie” from 2010 and “Sunhee” from 2013. A press kit published by Locarno describes the story as being about a lecturer at a women's university who asks her uncle, a blacklisted actor and director, to direct a school sitcom.
A longer synopsis provided by the Film Guild adds: “Following a scandal involving several of her students, Junim (played by Kim Minhee), an artist and lecturer at a women’s university, asks her uncle Cho Seon (Kwon Hye-hyo) to step in and direct a short play for the sitcom festival held by her department. Her uncle, an actor and director, was recently blacklisted after a scandal of his own. He decides to direct the short play because of a similar experience directing a play at the same university 40 years ago. It doesn’t take long for Seon to develop feelings for Junim’s colleague, Professor Jung (Cho Yun-hee), a textile professor. Meanwhile, the circumstances surrounding the scandal grow more complicated, and the moon in the sky gets brighter every night. Every morning, Junim goes to the creek and draws sketches to understand its patterns,” the synopsis reads.
“By the Stream is Hong’s longest film in years, but he managed to cram so much into two hours — the colors, the textures, the accumulation of narrative possibilities — that we didn’t want it to end,” said Film Guild president Peter Kelly.
Additionally, Cinema Guild also announced the acquisition of two previous Hong films, “Right Now, Wrong Then” from 2015 and “In Another Country” from 2012. Cinema Guild now owns the rights to 24 of Hong's 32 films and all but one of the films he has made since 2008.
Hong's “The Traveler's Needs,” set for release in early 2024, a short story about a French teacher in Seoul, won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize, or second prize, at the Berlin Film Festival in February this year.
Last year, Hong’s “In Water” screened in Berlin’s “Encounters” section. This follows three consecutive years in which Hong appeared in Berlin’s main competition, with “The Woman Who Ran,” which won the Silver Bear for Best Director in Berlin; 2021’s “Introduction,” which again won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at that year’s postponed festival; and 2022’s “The Novelist’s Film,” which won the Grand Jury Prize.
Hong's 2018 song “Hotel by the River” was previously performed at Locarno.
