The Soju Sessions: A Hong Sang-soo Primer

Hong Sang-soo writes his scenes on the morning of the shoot. His actors sometimes perform drunk — because the scenes require it, and because the soju is real. His films almost never exceed 80 minutes, cost around $100,000, and are shot on digital with a crew of a handful. He has made over thirty of them. The familiar complaints are part of the myth: that he makes the same film over and over, that his characters are insufferable, that his zoom shots are jarring. But repetition is the point. Hong's cinema is about the failure of self-awareness — the gap between how we narrate our lives and how we actually behave. Every film is a new variation on that theme, a new permutation of the same elements, like a jazz musician returning to the same changes. Critics reach for Eric Rohmer and Yasujirō Ozu. Hong himself lists Jean Vigo, Robert Bresson, and Ozu among his favorites. He is none of them — and, at this point, he is only himself.

This playlist features The Power of Kangwon Province, Tale of Cinema, Right Now, Wrong Then, On the Beach at Night Alone, The Woman Who Ran, The Novelist's Film, The Day a Pig Fell into the Well, Hahaha, Claire's Camera, A Traveler's Needs.

Films in this playlist

The Power of Kangwon Province — Hong Sang-soo · 1998. Hong's second film and first masterpiece: the template for everything that follows. Told in two halves that barely overlap, it establishes the structure-as-theme that defines his work. Start here if you want to understand the grammar…
Tale of Cinema — Hong Sang-soo · 2005. The film where Hong first fully deploys his signature zoom and introduces the meta-cinematic obsessions that never leave him. Loose, funny, and increasingly devastating — the ideal second film after Kangwon Province. This film belongs…
Right Now, Wrong Then — Hong Sang-soo · 2015. Not Groundhog Day logic; Hong offers no explanation, only a better version of two people. The most direct demonstration of his core thesis: honesty, not circumstance, changes everything. This may be the clearest expression of Hong’s…
On the Beach at Night Alone — Hong Sang-soo · 2017. Which is, of course, what was actually happening. The most autobiographically raw of Hong's films, and among his most emotionally direct: grief, limbo, and the strange lightness of a life lived outside convention. This film makes Hong’s…
The Woman Who Ran — Hong Sang-soo · 2020. Each visit is a long, unbroken conversation — the camera barely moves. One of the quietest films Hong has made and one of the best: a study in the texture of female friendship, the weight of compromised choices, and what it means to stay…
The Novelist's Film — Hong Sang-soo · 2022. The film ends by showing us the short film. Shot in black and white by Hong himself — he also edited, scored, and produced — this is his most purely joyful statement about the redemptive act of making art. This feels like Hong speaking…
The Day a Pig Fell into the Well — Hong Sang-soo · 1996. Rawer and more conventional than what follows, but the cruelty and the dark humor are already fully formed. Essential for understanding how deliberate the later minimalism is. This shows what Hong’s cinema looked like before it became…
Hahaha — Hong Sang-soo · 2010. The flashback structure is pure Hong: the story's meaning lives entirely in the gap between memory and fact. His funniest film; the soju flows freely, and so does the self-deception. This turns memory into comedy. The characters think…
Claire's Camera — Hong Sang-soo · 2017. Light on plot, rich in feeling — and the best demonstration of what Hong can do with a handful of actors, a borrowed location, and no script whatsoever. This is almost a manifesto for limitation. A few actors, a festival location, a…
A Traveler's Needs — Hong Sang-soo · 2024. One of Hong's most tender and cryptic late works. His second film in color after years of black and white, it feels like an exhale. This is a strong late-period addition because it continues Hong’s interest in language, performance,…