Cinema Guild will pair South Korean director Hong Sangsoo’s new film The Day She Returns with his 2011 feature The Day He Arrives in American cinemas. The double bill begins in Los Angeles and New York in December before expanding in January. Both films are in black and white, and both feature Song Sunmi.
Cinema Guild, the North American distributor of South Korean filmmaker Hong Sangsoo’s The Day She Returns, will release it alongside his earlier film The Day He Arrives. The double bill starts at the Acropolis cinema in Los Angeles on December 15 and reaches New York’s Metrograph on December 18. A wider American release is planned for January, carrying the paired programme into more cinemas.[1], [2]
The Day She Returns stars Song Sunmi as an actor who stopped performing after marrying, then returned following a divorce. Promoting an independent film, she gives three interviews half an hour apart. Her acting teacher later asks her to recreate those conversations, but her memory fails at crucial moments. Hong wrote and directed the black-and-white feature, also handling photography, editing and music.[1]
The Day He Arrives, made in 2011, follows Seongjun, a director who has stopped making films and now teaches at a rural college. Visiting Seoul, he encounters friends, students and a former girlfriend. Song Sunmi appears as film studies professor Boram in this film, which premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section. The two monochrome features were made fifteen years apart; the newer work competed at the Berlin film festival.[1]
