Screening accompanied by Q&A with Kim Dong-ho, founder of Busan International Film Festival and Kim Hong-joon, director of Korean Film Archive

A young woman makes her way to a mountain convent. The hard menial chores she is made to carry out, aloofness close to hostility from the young nuns, the spiritual challenges of the convent elder – none of this seems able to put her off. Flashbacks allow a glimpse of her motivations for leaving the world behind. However, the world, in the strange form of one broken yet determined man, pursues Soon-nyeo/sister Chung-hwa right to her refuge.

Im Kwon-taek began the decade of the 1980s with Mandala, probably the finest film ever made about Buddhism as part of human society. At the end of the decade, he turned once again to Kang Soo-yeon, this time to embody the troubled character Soon-nyeo. The film leaves us room to speculate whether Soon-nyeo is one more melodramatic victim or rather a living bodhisattva with a spiritual mission to rescue damaged humanity, rather than just herself.

Mark Morris