By the Stream

Successful former director Chu Sieon (Kwon Haehyo), now working quietly as a bookshop owner, has arrived at a university to direct a short theater piece after its student director has been let go from the project. He appears at the invitation of his niece, Jeonim (Kim Minhee), an artist and teacher whom he hasn’t seen in 10 years. Living with regrets about decisions made at this very university decades earlier, Chu Sieon both rebuilds his family bond and forges a new one with the admiring Professor Jeong (Cho Yunhee). Hong Sangsoo’s latest portrait of people discovering emotional kinship and recharging their creative selves is wondrous in its simplicity yet expansive in feeling. By the Stream is a deeply affectionate rendering of the constant process of self-actualization, whether in youth or late middle-age, and features one of Hong’s most poignant scenes to date, in which Chu Sieon and the student actors share their hopes and promises for the future. An NYFF62 Main Slate selection. A Cinema Guild release.