The Woman Who Ran 2020
While her husband is on a business trip, Gam-hee meets three of her friends on the outskirts of Seoul.
While her husband is on a business trip, Gam-hee meets three of her friends on the outskirts of Seoul.
Young-hee, an actress reeling in the aftermath of an affair with a married film director, escapes to Hamburg. But when she returns to Korea and meets with friends for drinks, startling confessions emerge.
Claire, a school teacher with a camera is on her first visit to Cannes. She happens upon a film sales assistant, Man-hee, recently laid off after a one-night stand with a film director.
On her first day at work, Areum replaces a woman who broke up with the boss. The wife of the boss finds a love note, bursts into the office, and mistakes Areum for the other woman.
Chun-su arrives in Suwon one day earlier than scheduled. He has a special lecture to give the next day. Chun-su decides to visit a palace and meets Hee-jung there. Hee-jung is a painter and she lets Chun-su see her workroom with her paintings. In the evening, they go out eat and drink together. There, Chun-su reveals something unexpected to Hee-jung.
Iris, a woman abroad in Seoul, teaches French and English in an idiosyncratic fashion that allows her to pursue her own philosophical and personal interests. Through four encounters over a single day, Iris probes students and strangers for information about poetry, their own histories, and their relationship to their egos.
Kwon, a language school instructor, stops by her old workplace and receives a thick envelope addressed to her. A Japanese instructor named Mori had proposed to her two years ago. She turned him down. Mori had immediately gone back to Japan, but now was back in Korea looking for her. The envelope enclosed letters he had written to her during his search through Seoul. After Kwon finishes the first letter in the lobby, she grows faint coming down the staircase and drops the letters. She gathers them off the floor and sees there are no dates on the letters. She now has no way of knowing the order in which they were written.
Hae-won, a college student, wants to end her secret affair with her professor, Seong-jun. Feeling depressed after bidding farewell to her mother who is set to immigrate to Canada the next day, Hae-won seeks out Seong-jun again after a long time. That day, they run into her classmates at a restaurant and their relationship gets revealed. Hae-won gets more agitated and Seong-jun makes an extreme suggestion to run away together.
Recently returned to South Korea, an actress in her forties is staying with her friend and her cat. Meanwhile, an aging poet in declining health lives alone after the death of his own cat. One day, each receives a visit from a different young aspiring artist, who come equipped with questions about their careers and life itself.
A director, a cinematographer, and an actress spend the days leading up to a movie shoot together on-location, waiting for the director to come up with an idea for what the film will be about.
In Seoul, a suicidal student meets a young woman who decides to join him in his fatal gesture. Tongsu, an unsuccessful filmmaker, spots a beautiful young woman, who happens to be the lead actress in the film he has just seen. Their stories will cross paths thanks to their love for cinema.
A young woman and her mother run away to the seaside town of Mohang to escape their mounting debt. The young woman begins writing a script for a short film in order to calm her nerves: There are three women named Anne, and each woman consecutively visits the seaside town of Mohang. A young woman tends to the small hotel by the Mohang foreshore owned by her parents. A certain lifeguard can be seen restlessly wandering up and down the beach that lies nearby. Each Anne stays at this small hotel, receives some assistance from the owner’s daughter, and ventures onto the beach where they meet the lifeguard.
A lecturer named Jeonim asks her uncle to direct a theatrical skit put on by her school department. Each day, Jeonim goes to a nearby stream to sketch and try to grasp its patterns. Her uncle decides to direct the skit because of his memories directing one at this same university, 40 years earlier. A scandalous incident arises among the students, and Jeonim and her uncle end up getting involved.
Areum sits in a small café, typing on her laptop. Around her, customers enact various dramas from their lives. Is she writing what she hears or is she hearing what's been written?
A novelist visits a bookstore run by a young colleague who's been out of touch, then takes a walk with a film director and his wife. She meets an actress and tries to convince her to make a film together.
Young-ho goes to see his father who is tending to a famous patient. He surprises his girlfriend, Ju-won, in Berlin where she is studying fashion design. He goes to a seaside hotel to meet his mother and brings his friend Jeong-soo with him. In each instance, he anticipates an important conversation. But sometimes a shared look, or a shared smoke, can mean as much as anything we could say to those close to us.
An aging poet summons his estranged sons to the hotel he is staying at because he feels his death is near; meanwhile, he encounters two women staying at the hotel.
A film director who no longer makes films arrives in Seoul to meet a close friend. When the friend doesn't show up, he wanders the city aimlessly for three days, grabbing drinks and meeting women, with each day playing out like a version of the last.
A South Korean art house film director is first invited to serve on the panel of a film festival, then to guest lecture at a film school.
Oki, a film student, gets involved in two relationships as she navigates the advances of a fellow student and grapples with her feelings for her much older professor.