THE DAY A PIG FELL INTO A WELL
Synopsis
Hyo-seop (Kim Eui-sung), a poor third-rate novelist full of inferiority complexes. Min-jae (Cho Eun-sook), whom he meets through a publishing house, falls in love with him and helps edit his manuscript. However, Hyo-seop is obsessed with his affair with Bo-kyung (Lee Eung-kyung), a woman who is fed up with her husband Dong-woo (Park Jin-sung), who suffers from obsessive cleanliness and constantly doubts his wife. Longing to escape her stifling marriage, Bo-kyung decides to run away with Hyo-seop.
Director's biography
Hong Sang-soo (born in 1960) is one of South Korea’s most distinctive and internationally celebrated auteurs. After early studies in theater at Chung-Ang University, he pursued film in the U.S., earning degrees from the California College of Arts and Crafts and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His directorial debut, The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (1996), marked a bold new voice in Korean cinema and heavily influenced a generation of young filmmakers. Known for his minimalist style, narrative repetition, and improvisational approach, Hong has built a prolific body of work exploring human relationships with subtlety and irony. His films have regularly premiered at major festivals including Cannes, Berlin, Venice, and Locarno. He won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes with Hahaha (2010), the Golden Leopard at Locarno for Right Now, Wrong Then (2015), and the Silver Bear for Best Director at Berlin with The Woman Who Ran (2020). Hong remains a singular figure in world cinema for his deeply personal, low-budget, yet profoundly resonant films.