ALONERS

Jina (Gong Seung-yeon) is the best performer in the call centre of a credit card company in Seoul – and a woman who avoids any closeness. She eats alone, lives alone, and keeps her father at a distance since her mother’s death. Then the neighbour in the next-door flat dies without anyone noticing, and Jina is assigned to train a new colleague: Sujin (Jeong Da-eun), who responds to all this with questions Jina stopped asking long ago. “Aloners”, the feature debut of South Korean director Hong Seong-eun from 2021, watches a carefully sealed-off life develop cracks.

Hong, who also wrote the screenplay and edited the film, tells of urban solitude without indictment and without comfort, in a tone that hovers between everyday drama and a quiet ghost story. It premiered in the Korean competition of the Jeonju Film Festival in 2021; Gong Seung-yeon later won Best New Actress at the Blue Dragon Film Awards and Best Actress at the Turin Film Festival. “Aloners” was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2021.

Shown at the 2021 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2021 · Film Archive