Key Takeaways
Hong Sang-soo's 35th feature film, When the Day Comes, will open in South Korea on Oct. 21.
The film follows a daughter, Sang-hee, as she travels to Jeju Island to look for her mother, whom she last saw 10 years ago.
It won the director prize and Kim Min-hee's best acting award at the Locarno Film Festival, along with an ecumenical jury prize.
On Oct. 21, a new Hong Sang-soo film will arrive in Korean theaters. The title is When the Day Comes. The ingredients will feel familiar to anyone who knows the director’s work: estranged families, uneasy conversations, and Kim Min-hee’s face at the center of the frame. But that familiarity is exactly what makes the film worth watching closely.
The story follows Sang-hee, a daughter from a broken home, as she heads to Jeju Island in search of the mother she last saw 10 years ago. Over that simple premise, Hong layers his signature style of repetition, hesitation, and emotional drift. The real question is not whether the theme is new, but what he can still reveal by returning to it again.
A daughter on Jeju, and a familiar Hong Sang-soo setup
When the Day Comes begins with a straightforward premise. Sang-hee, whose parents are divorced, travels to Jeju Island to find her mother. In Hong Sang-soo’s films, though, a plain plot summary is rarely the point. The destination matters less than the pauses, awkward turns, and offhand remarks that accumulate along the way.
Jeju is often portrayed in Korean films as a place of escape or romance, but here it reads more like a landscape of absence. The trip to find a mother becomes less a reunion drama than a test of whether absence can ever really be filled. Once again, Hong returns to the tensions he has long explored: family, love, and the small failures in human connection.
The title itself sounds almost like a statement of condition. “When the day comes” suggests anticipation, but also uncertainty. Hong’s characters often seem to live in that uncertainty, unable to settle anywhere emotionally. The more he repeats that feeling, the more distinct his world becomes.
Why Locarno paid attention
The film was invited to the competition section of the 79th Locarno Film Festival, held in Switzerland, where it won the director prize and the best acting award for Kim Min-hee. It also received the ecumenical jury prize, an award given by Protestant and Catholic jurors to works seen as carrying a message about human life and dignity. Festival recognition does not guarantee a film’s commercial success at home, but it does suggest that this is not a closed, purely self-contained work.
Hong’s films are often dismissed as “more of the same.” Yet what international festivals repeatedly respond to may be the subtle differences inside that sameness: small shifts in performance, rhythm, and atmosphere. For a director who favors observation over genre thrills, an award is more than decoration. It is a sign that his method still carries weight, both for himself and for audiences willing to look closely.
Hong Sang-soo and Kim Min-hee, where familiarity creates tension
As usual, Hong handled not only direction but also the screenplay, cinematography, sound, editing, and music. Kim Min-hee is listed as the lead actor and also as production manager. That concentration of roles has long been a hallmark of Hong’s filmmaking. It gives his work a strong internal logic, but it also means the film can feel less open to outside voices.
That structure has clear strengths and clear risks. On the positive side, the film’s eye and rhythm remain consistent from beginning to end. On the negative side, the result can look like self-repetition, making it harder for viewers to detect change. This criticism has followed Hong for years, and it will likely follow this film as well. Still, the Jeju setting and the emotional pull of a mother search may make the familiar form feel sharper rather than softer.
The cast also draws attention. Choi Myoung-gil appears in a Hong Sang-soo film for the first time, alongside Kwon Hae-hyo, Shin Seok-ho, and Park Mi-so. Hong’s films usually work with a relatively small cast, but even one new presence can alter the atmosphere of a scene. In a story built around familial absence, that matters.
Not just another release, but a current Hong Sang-soo film
It is easy to brush off a new Hong Sang-soo film with a shrug and say, “another one.” But that response erases how long he has been refining the same questions inside Korean cinema. The fact that this is his 35th feature is not just a production milestone. It is evidence of a long-running artistic project: How much of family can be restored? Does language clarify relationships, or make them more unstable?
That does not mean the film should be praised without hesitation. Repetition can build identity, but it also builds fatigue. Hong remains one of the most international of Korean auteurs and, at the same time, one of the most stubbornly self-contained. When the Day Comes is likely to invite both reactions once again.
In the end, the film’s significance will not rest on its awards or release date alone. A daughter’s trip to Jeju is also Hong Sang-soo asking, in his own present tense, whether returning to the same questions can still produce a new expression. That is the difference viewers will be watching for. And that difference is where his films have continued to survive.
