Arirang

An actress was almost involved in a fatal accident during the filming of Dream. […] If I hadn’t quickly jumped on that ladder and untied the rope… I totally lost it for a while and cried without anyone knowing. That moment, which I never want to recall, made me look back on the 15 films I frantically made during my 13-year film career. Completely authorial, non-compromising confession of one of the leading artistic cinema directors. After this accident, Kim spends two years in voluntary exile, living in a hut with no heating located in the Korean countryside. Remaining in a state of dialogue with the on-screen self and his own shadow, he analyses the sources of his works and underlying emotions and complexes. The form is suspended between self-flagellation and narcissism. During the breaks taken from watching old films, paintings and posters, he does some DIY, constructing a coffee machine and a gun which he uses to settle all the matters with the characters from the past. The title song performed in a traditional way and accompanying the moments of melancholy becomes a moving refrain. During the culmination point, Kim not so much sings as wheezes through tears: Arirang, Arirang, Arariyo / Arirang Pass is the long road you go.