The Novelist's Film

a film by Hong Sangsoo
2022, 92 minutes

Poster

Synopsis

Junhee (Lee Hyeyoung, last seen in Hong’s In Front of Your Face) is a novelist who's 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

Reviews

"As close as Hong as come to dramatizing his own process."
- Dennis Lim, Tale of Cinema

"One of the director’s sweetest films, registering ultimately as a touchingly sincere tribute to his life in filmmaking, and to love discovered through art-making."
- Matt Turner, Little White Lies

"[A] focused, charming autofiction, well-structured yet open to the inspirations of serendipity...Hong has always given viewers the impression that he—or, rather, he and Kim—are making exactly the film they want to make, but rarely before “The Novelist’s Film” has it seemed to bring the two of them such pure bliss."
- Mark Asch, The Playlist

"[Hong's] most openly emotive and personal filmmaking to date... palpably life-affirming."
-Joshua Minsoo Kim, In Review Online

"Suggests that Hong has yet to exhaust his methods of deriving significance and beauty from the most quotidian of details, and perhaps that his strongest work is yet to come."
-Jake Cole, Slant

Press Materials

High Res Photos & Press Kit
Press Release

Where to watch

Opens October 28

Playdates

Oct 28 - Film at Lincoln Center - New York, NY

Nov 4-10: Gene Siskel Film Center - Chicago, IL
Nov 4-10: Lake Worth Playhouse - Lake Worth, FL
Nov 5: Museum of Fine Arts Houston - Houston, TX
Nov 7-8: Acropolis Cinema - Los Angeles, CA
Nov 11: Lumiere Cinema - Los Angeles, CA
Nov 11-13: Portland Museum of Art - Portland, ME
Nov 16: Suns Cinema - Washington, DC
Nov 18-Dec 1: Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center - Lincoln, NE
Nov 18-Dec 1: Sun-Ray Cinema - Jacksonville, FL
Nov 19-20: Oklahoma City Museum of Art - Oklahoma City, OK
Nov 22: Cinema Arts Center - Huntington, NY

Dec 1: Lightbox Film Center - Philadelphia, PA
Dec 1-7: FilmScene - Iowa City, IA
Dec 8-9: Cleveland Cinematheque - Cleveland, OH
Dec 8: Barrymore Film Center - Fort Lee, NJ
Dec 9-15: Pickford Film Center - Bellingham, WA
Dec 14-18: Northwest Film Forum - Seattle, WA
Dec 16-18: Webster Film Series - St. Louis, MO
Dec 16-22: Kan-Kan Cinema - Indianapolis, IN
Dec 23-29: Lark Theatre - Larkspur, CA
Dec 30-Jan 5: Center for Contemporary Arts - Santa Fe, NM

Jan 1: Museum of the Moving Image - Astoria, NY
Jan 20: Duke University Cinema - Durham, NC

Feb 10-11: UWM Union Cinema - Milwaukee, WI

April 1-2: Detroit Institute of Arts - Detroit, MI

May 5 & 13: Harvard Film Archive - Cambridge, MA