This understated black-and-white film uses creative cross-editing to contrast the youths of poet Yoon Dong-ju (Kang Ha-neul) and his cousin and comrade Song Mong-gyu (Park Jeong-min). The two young men, whose relationship crossed literature and belief, friendship and frustration, were arrested and imprisoned in a Fukuoka prison during the Japanese occupation. Yoon Dong-ju died on 16 February 1945, and Song Mong-gyu died only 20 days later on 7 March 1945. Rather than a huge historical drama, the film examines the tragedy of the times through the quiet lens of everyday silence and language.

Dongju: The Portrait of a Poet chooses the blank margin rather than exaggeration. It captures the ethics and fears of youth through poetry, dialogue, and small gestures, and asks a question that is still valid today: Through what is liberation possible? It relies on a background of historical events but also uses the poetic density of mise-en-scène to draw out the inner lives of the characters and remains a paragon of how Korean films deal with the idea of ‘memory.’

Park Se-ho