Exclusive Trailer for Hong Sangsoo’s By the Stream Discovers a Day in Authentic Love

      While nearly every film by Hong Sangsoo receives positive reactions from audiences who seek it out, By the Stream has garnered a bit more significance––the feeling that, following a few years of particularly personal experiments, his longest feature (yet still just 111 minutes) echoes the work that first captivated many of us. (The fact that he now dedicates an extra day to writing dialogue may account for the difference.) Regardless, another change is promising. Why should Hong, whose allure has never faded, remain static? Therefore, we are excited to exclusively unveil a trailer for the film, which (drumroll) Cinema Guild will release on August 8 at Film at Lincoln Center. From this trailer, it is already clear that the visuals in By the Stream have a touch more grandeur and, dare I say, richness.

      As Rory O'Connor noted in his review from Locarno, "By the Stream’s deviations, and consequently its strengths, are more pronounced. Its runtime nearly approaches two hours––more typical of the pre-2010 period when he was filming on actual film and utilizing larger production resources––and the human insights eschew the fleeting vignette style; true to its title, it offers an immersive experience in a specific kind of soulful, middle-class malaise, reminiscent of John Cassavetes’ more subdued films."

      Find the preview and synopsis below:

      In light of a scandal involving several of her students, Jeonim (Kim Minhee), an artist and lecturer at a women's university, seeks help from her uncle Chu Sieon (Kwon Haehyo) to direct a short play for the skit festival organized by her department. Her uncle, an actor-director who has recently been blacklisted following his own scandal, agrees to take on the directing role due to a similar experience he had directing a play at the same university 40 years prior. It isn't long before Sieon develops feelings for Jeonim’s colleague, Professor Jeong (Cho Yunhee), a textile professor. Meanwhile, the details surrounding the scandal become increasingly complex, the moon rises each night, and every morning Jeonim goes to the stream to sketch in order to capture its patterns. For his 32nd feature film, Hong Sangsoo returns to the campus setting found in films like Oki's Movie (2010) and Our Sunhi (2013), revisiting thematic concerns and modes of expression he hasn’t engaged with in his work for some time.