Contemporary Masters

The Woman Who Ran


directed by: Hong Sang-soo
year: 2020
country: South Korea
genre: drama
film run: 77 MINUTEs

Story line: While her husband is on a business trip, Gamhee meets three of her friends on the outskirts of Seoul. They make friendly conversation but there are different currents flowing independently of each other, both above and below the surface.

“There’s an apparent simplicity to The Woman Who Ran which subtly reveals an extremely profound and vivid life, but things are never actually said, they’re only sensed on intuition. The exaggerated politeness of the protagonist keeps her from confessing herself to any of the characters in her odyssey, because that would mean admitting to herself that she has run from home.” - Georgiana Mușat, Films in Frame

Days


directed by: Tsai Ming-liang
year: 2020
country: Taiwan, France
genre: drama
film run: 127 MINUTEs

Story line: Kang lives alone in a big house. Through a glass façade, he looks out onto the treetops lashed by wind and rain. He feels a strange pain of unknown origin, which he can hardly bear, gripping his whole body. Non lives in a small apartment in Bangkok, where he methodically prepares traditional dishes from his native village. When Kang meets Non in a hotel room, the two men share each other's loneliness.

The Exit of the Trains


directed by: Radu Jude
year: 2020
country: Romania
genre: documentary, history
film run: 175 MINUTEs

Story line: This is a documentary essay composed entirely of archive photographs and documents of the first big massacre of the Jews in Romania: in the city of Iasi, on the 29th of June 1941, more than 10.000 Jews were killed - first by bullets, then by asphyxiation in freight trains. The film, which is an attempt to use the montage of archive materials in order to offer a deep and special view of History, has two parts: The first part of the film could be titled "the encyclopedia of the dead": photographs of the people who were eventually killed by the Romanian army and by civilians are accompanied by voices who recite the documents related to their fate in the massacre: witness accounts, testimonies from the post-war trials, interviews with survivors, private diaries etc. The second part, shorter, represents a montage of the remaining photographs of the actual massacre (taken mostly by the German soldiers who were in town).

„If one is to consider that the audience watching the Lumière brothers’ “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat” was, according to the famous anecdote, scared witless upon seeing the train approach — it is the train’s departure that should, in fact, terrify beyond any measure.” - Flavia Dima, Kinoscope

Come here


directed by: Anocha Suwichakornpong
year: 2021
country: Thailand
genre: drama
film run: 70 MINUTEs

Story line: Four young travelers embark on a trip to Kanchanaburi to see the museum, but pass the time in other ways when they find out it's closed for refurbishment.

Come Here is constantly unengaging and superfluous. A film that defies meaning also somehow has a meaning and aim in sight. Thus, Suwichakornpong’s experimental creation lacks a formidable look at something concrete. The vagueness of the entire proceedings leaves you with a sense of dismay instead of awe. While some sequences truly stand out, some just go on forever.”, Berlinale Review


Location: Amfiteatrul Palas