Hong Sang-soo: Close-up at Bozar

From 30 April to 11 May, Bozar in Brussels focuses on the work of the South Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo. During these two weeks, nine of Hong's films will be shown, including some of his earliest works. The retrospective also includes talks by several guest speakers.

Hong Sang-soo’s films explore life’s contingencies through repeated figures, modulating motives, and narrative variability. Every story contains multiple versions – some untold, some already familiar – creating a playful yet idiotic sense of chance, as Jacques Aumont notes. Misunderstandings and missteps disrupt characters’ paths, yet events unfold without a strict causal order. In Hong’s world, relationships and futures remain open to infinite possibilities. From The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (1996) to The Woman Who Ran (2020), which won him the Silver Bear at Berlinale, and recent films like A Traveler's Needs (2024), starring Isabelle Huppert, Hong has refined his intuitive, rigorous method. Writing dialogue each morning, he films with static long takes, occasional zooms, and no predefined template, allowing everyday moments to reveal unexpected narrative patterns. His cinema, wary of grand generalizations, blends presence and abstraction, bringing his work close to the vision of French filmmaker Robert Bresson: film as a method of discovery, where to find is not to seek.

In relation to Hong’s work, Sabzian published an online issue in 2020. This collection of texts and interviews appeared originally as the publication Hong Sang-soo. Infinite Worlds Possible – compiled, edited and published by Sabzian, Courtisane and CINEMATEK, on the occasion of the 2018 retrospective in Brussels.