Art imitates life in this quietly devastating masterpiece from Hong Sangsoo. Kim Minhee—in the role that won her the Silver Bear for best actress in Berlin—plays Younghee, an actress reeling in the aftermath of an affair with a married film director. Younghee visits Hamburg then returns to Korea, but as she meets with friends and has her fair share to drink, increasingly startling confessions emerge.

No stranger to mining his own experience for his films, Hong, whose real-life affair with Kim stirred up a media frenzy in Korea, here confronts his personal life with a newfound emotional directness. With an incredibly raw and vulnerable performance from Kim at its center, On the Beach At Night Alone is one of the most dynamic collaborations between director and performer in contemporary cinema.

“Poignant and witty… a fascinating sublimation of autobiography into Hong’s precise creative terms.” – Eric Kohn, Indiewire

“As gut-wrenching, funny, and formally freewheeling as anything in recent cinema.” – Dan Sullivan, Film Comment

“An equality between performer and director which I haven’t experienced before in a film…I think it’s Hong Sang-soo’s best.” – Neil Bahadur, MUBI Notebook

“It’s more than worth seeing for Kim’s exposed nerve endings alone, and also for the way in which Hong’s typically playful sensibility seems to tilt at times into a surreal, menacing strangeness.” – Justin Chang, LA Times