Hong Sangsoo

Hong Sangsoo (1960) is one of contemporary cinema’s most singular filmmakers. Since discovering the work of Robert Bresson, he has patiently carved out his own path through cinema, weaving an ever subtly changing canvas of minute variations on the same narrative threads, playfully entwining themes of love, desire, deception, and regret. Since his debut The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (1996), Hong has continuously reinvented his explorations of the arbitrariness and contingency of life’s connections and directions, working through an intuitive process of writing and filming that allows the everyday to unfold into unexpected visual and narrative patterns. A prolific and celebrated presence at major international festivals, he won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlinale for The Woman Who Ran (2020), the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay for Introduction (2021), the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize for The Novelist’s Film (2022), and again the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize for A Traveler’s Needs (2024).