Utopia (2025)

The Portrait of a Director

According to koreanfilm.or.kr data, only 597 people have seen this movie, which makes me one of the few who have seen it. This is, of course, an indie film, and it certainly isn’t for a general audience, but it has its own beauty and attractiveness.

At the center of the movie is a film director who meets and talks with people in preparation for his new project. The conversations resemble those in Hong Sang-soo’s films, where characters simply converse naturally, with meaning that often remains unspoken. I liked the short moments of instrumental music between the shots and the beautiful natural scenery, but I couldn’t really grasp the theme of the movie through the acting. Maybe the film simply portrays the life of a movie director.

There is also the symbolism of the title: *Utopia*, or even better, in the original Korean: 몽유도원, an old traditional Chinese and Korean utopian concept of finding a hidden paradise. In this movie, the characters share their dreams and visions, mixing reality and fantasy, and pointing to art as something that helps us go beyond basic existence.

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