(Hong Sangsoo, South Korea, 2021, 85 min, in Korean with English subtitles)

After years living abroad, former actress Sangok (Lee Hyeyoung) is back in Seoul, staying with her sister Jeongok (Cho Yunhee) in her high-rise apartment. The siblings sleep late, have breakfast in a cafe and visit a restaurant owned by Jeongok’s son. But as the details of Sangok’s day accrue (a spill on her blouse, an encounter at her childhood home), it becomes clear that there is much she is not revealing. And these mysterious circumstances have something to do with her decision to meet with film director Jaewon (Kwon Haehyo) to discuss her return to acting.

In her first role for Hong, Lee, a prominent theater and screen actress in South Korea, makes a captivating return to the big screen. With In Front of Your Face, Hong suggests that perhaps the most important things in this life are also the most immediate.

Synopsis and stills courtesy of The Cinema Guild. Full photo credits are available here.

“Tender, moving…One of Hong’s most emotionally generous films.” – Dave White, The Wrap

“Intimate and fluid… [a] serenely passionate deployment of art as resistance to mortality.” – Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“One of Hong’s most moving films… a love letter to Seoul and a superb character study of the beatific presence of mind and body with which one woman faces death… tinged with the beauty and sadness of transience.” – Becca Voelcker, Sight and Sound

“In Front of Your Face isn’t concerned with the petty personal grievances loved ones amass over a lifetime. Instead, it fixates on the small revelations that serve as self-imposed curtains between individuals, drawn tightly (and sometimes unintentionally) until a knowing light begs to shine through.” -Natalia Keogan, Paste