General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Novelist's Film (소설가의 영화)

The Novelist's Film (소설가의 영화) is a 2022 South Korean black-and-white drama directed by Hong Sang-soo, his 27th feature, in which a novelist who has stopped writing meets an actress and decides to make a film with her. It won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival, Hong's third consecutive year of winning an award in Berlin.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director	Hong Sang-soo, who also wrote the screenplay, shot, edited, and composed the music³
Award	Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize, 72nd Berlin International Film Festival, February 16, 2022¹
Runtime and format	92 minutes, black and white with a color sequence near the end⁴^•⁵
Principal cast	Lee Hye-young (Junhee), Kim Min-hee (Kilsoo), Seo Young-hwa (Sewon), Kwon Hae-hyo (Hyojin), Cho Yun-hee, Ki Joo-bong (Mansoo), Park Mi-so⁶
Production	Shot over two weeks in March 2021; Kim Min-hee served as production manager as well as lead actress³
Release	South Korea April 2022; United States October 28, 2022, released by The Cinema Guild⁷
Critical reception	100% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 29 reviews⁴

Spoilers

Plot

Junhee (Lee Hye-young) is a well-known novelist who has fallen into a slump and no longer writes. She travels to the outskirts of Seoul to visit Sewon (Seo Young-hwa), a younger colleague who runs a small bookshop and had been out of contact with her.⁸^•⁹ At the bookshop she learns sign language from an employee (Park Mi-so), then visits a nearby observation tower, where she runs into the film director Hyojin (Kwon Hae-hyo) and his wife (Cho Yun-hee); a film adaptation of one of her novels that Hyojin was to direct had fallen through, leaving the relationship strained.⁸^•⁴

On a walk in the park below the tower, the group meets the actress Kilsoo (Kim Min-hee), who has been inactive in her work. Junhee tells Kilsoo she wants to make a film with her, and Kilsoo joins her at a drinking party at Sewon's bookshop, where the poet Mansoo (Ki Joo-bong) also appears.¹⁰^•⁹ The film follows these chance encounters and conversations, much of it over food and makgeolli, the fizzy rice wine that loosens the characters' tongues.¹¹

The ending. The film closes with a passage presumed to be the short film Junhee has made, starring Kilsoo. In it, the black-and-white image suddenly switches to color: Kilsoo picks flowers with a middle-aged woman, carries the bouquet-like bundle while humming Wagner's "Wedding March," and the image returns to black and white as Kilsoo, having watched the finished film alone in a small theater, walks out.⁵

Production

Hong Sang-soo shot the film over two weeks in March 2021, working in his established small-crew manner: he is credited with the screenplay, direction, cinematography, editing, and music, and Kim Min-hee, his partner and longtime collaborator, is credited as production manager in addition to playing Kilsoo.³ Kim had been appearing in Hong's films since Right Now, Wrong Then (2015) and had taken the production manager credit beginning with Introduction (2021).¹² The cast draws on his regular ensemble: Seo Young-hwa and Ki Joo-bong are among the actors who have worked with him most often, and Kwon Hae-hyo, Cho Yun-hee, and Park Mi-so carried over from recent films.¹³^•¹⁴

The film was produced by Jeonwonsa Film, the company through which Hong's recent features have been made.⁴

Berlin and reception

At the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival, the jury awarded the Grand Jury Prize (Silver Bear) to The Novelist's Film on February 16, 2022; the Golden Bear that year went to Carla Simón's Alcarràs and the best-director Silver Bear to Claire Denis for Both Sides of the Blade.¹ The prize was Hong's third consecutive award at Berlin, following the Silver Bear for Best Director for The Woman Who Ran (2020) and the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay for Introduction (2021).²^•¹⁵

The film opened in South Korea in April 2022 and in the United States on October 28, 2022 at Film at Lincoln Center as part of the 60th New York Film Festival's Main Slate, distributed by The Cinema Guild.⁷ On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 100% Tomatometer from 29 reviews, with the critics' consensus describing Hong as distilling "beauty and wisdom from the mundane."⁴ Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times called it "tense, absorbing and finally enchanting," and the New York Times review described it as "a Chekhovian study in small moments and chance encounters."⁴

Place in Hong's work

The film continues the loose, conversational mode of Hong's recent features centered on women, following On the Beach at Night Alone (2017), The Woman Who Ran (2020), and In Front of Your Face (2021), and it reteams him with Lee Hye-young, the star of In Front of Your Face, in her second Hong film.⁹^•¹⁶ Critics have read it as one of his most direct statements about filmmaking itself: the critic Lee Ji-hyun noted the film's scenes of characters learning things, from sign language to how a film gets made, and one Korean critics' poll ranked it third among the Korean films of 2022.⁸^•¹⁷ The sudden color sequence at the end, in which the filmmaker-figure offers a bouquet to his actress, has been noted as a recurring image in Hong's later work, appearing again in In Water (2023).¹⁸

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026