Aloners
Asian Cinema
•
Drama
Jina (Gong Seung-yeon) is the top employee at a call center, but despite talking to customers all day, she has shut out the world beyond her headset; she lives alone, eats alone, sleeps alone, and her cell phone is her constant companion. When one day she's tasked with training a friendly and naive new hire (Jung Da-eun), her icy armor is threatened. At the same time, she must navigate an incessantly ingratiating new neighbor, and increasingly urgent phone calls from her father, leaving Jina teetering on the edge of an existential crisis, forcing her to confront why she has isolated herself all these years.
Riffing on the Korean ‘honjok’ – a phenomenon of young people who live alone and skirt social interaction – to examine the personal traumas of loss and alienation, this subtly poetic directorial debut is a "stirring portrait of the cages we build for ourselves and questions how and when we may want to be free of them" (Ms. Magazine).
DIRECTED BY HONG SUNG-EUN
SOUTH KOREA | 2021 | KOREAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
Up Next in Asian Cinema
-
The Princess Warrior
Descended from Genghis Khan and skilled in all forms of military combat, Princess Khutulun (Tsedoo Munkhbat) is one of the fiercest warriors in the Mongol Empire. Despite her talents on the battlefield, Khutulun is still expected to marry, and her father, Kaidu Khan, arranges for a union with the...
-
Still the Water
On the subtropical Japanese island of Amami, sixteen-year-old Kaito (Nijiro Murakami) discovers a young woman’s body floating in the sea. His girlfriend Kyoko (Jun Yoshinaga) attempts to help him make sense of this mystery while also coming to terms with her shaman mother’s terminal illness. Toge...
-
Radiance
Misako (Ayame Misaki) is a passionate writer of film versions for the visually impaired. At a screening, she meets Nakamori (Masatoshi Nagase), an older photographer who is slowly losing his eyesight. Misako soon discovers Nakamori’s photographs, which strangely bring her back to her past. Togeth...