By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com
The Cinema Guild Acquires Hong Sangsoo’s “The Day He Arrives,” Official Selection of Un Certain Regard at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival
New York, NY — The Cinema Guild announced today the acquisition of U.S. distribution rights to The Day He Arrives, the acclaimed new film from Hong Sangsoo. The deal was negotiated by Ryan Krivoshey of The Cinema Guild with Luna Kim of Finecut. Theatrical release details will be forthcoming.
Sungjoon, a film director who no longer makes films, heads to Seoul to meet a close friend. When the friend doesn’t show up, Sungjoon decides to wander around. He runs into an actress he used to know, shares a drink with some young film students, and against his better judgment, heads to his ex-girlfriend’s house. The next day, or perhaps some other day, Sungjoon finally meets his friend. They go to a bar called Novel whose owner bears a striking resemblance to his ex-girlfriend. The next day goes very much like the previous day. But for however many days Sungjoon spends in Seoul, hopefully he’ll be able to discover the unseen forces behind all the random happenings in his life.
Hong Sangsoo made his debut in 1996 with the celebrated “The Day a Pig Fell into the Well.” Since then, through the 11 films that he wrote and directed, like “The Power of Kangwon Province,” (1998) “Turning Gate,” (2002) and “Ha Ha Ha” (2010), which won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize, Hong has consistently enjoyed using a complex and highly ordered architecture under a seemingly random surface created by spontaneous circumstances to shed insight into his characters’ lives. Renowned for his unique cinematographic language and unprecedented aesthetics in filmmaking, Hong Sangsoo is considered one of the most established auteurs in contemporary Korean cinema.
“We’ve long been admirers of Hong Sangsoo’s films,” commented Ryan Krivoshey, “so we’re especially thrilled to be releasing The Day He Arrives, his best film in years.”
The Cinema Guild is a distributor of independent, foreign and documentary films. Upcoming releases include Steve James and Alex Kotlowitz’s “The Interrupters,” Cristi Puiu’s “Aurora,” Vadim Jendreyko’s “The Woman with the Five Elephants” and Bela Tarr’s “The Turin Horse.”
###