More than anything, this documentary is a love story. It’s a story about a man and the things that man loved to do. Roh Hoechan loved what he did more than anyone and he wanted to do it well. So this is a romantic love story that focuses on his convictions and dedication, his joys and struggles, rather than rushing to conclusions about the meaning of his final act.

As a director, I could understand something about the difficulties that come with someone's love for what they do. To pursue what I want to do without becoming exhausted, I must balance my work and my life. Sometimes my work starts to eat away my everyday freedoms. Even though I know it's happening, the work is so important to me that I allow it to happen. So I could relate to the exhaustion of loving what you do. It was a familiar issue that kept coming up in my life as a director. There were moments when the story of this figure ended up saying something about the director too, and that's how this film was able to get made. So the film consists of an explanation of what his work was, his love for it, and the toll it took in terms of exhaustion. That may not be the only way to show Roh Hoechan as a person, but it was a way for the director to understand his subject.

While my first aim as a director was to communicate that understanding, I also had a secondary goal of leaving a record of these people's collective dream of a different world: in the expressions and eyes of the interviewees as they attest to and share about Roh's unrequited love—and even in the instant noodles you see sitting on the desk as the archival footage passes by. I anticipated that the viewers might be interested in those sorts of things, and in watching the film again after all this time, I gained a new sense of how a director communicates their interest and understanding. MIN Hwanki

Sogyumo Acacia Band’s Story (2009), Anxiety (2012), Vote Young Ones (2021)

Retrospective in the present tense
The Man with High Hopes chronicles the activities of the late Roh Hoechan, an icon of progressive politics in Korea. It is a documentary that centers on a politician who was supported by many, only to depart their lives all too suddenly. In that sense, it inevitably takes on a character of official mourning. Yet even as it expresses feelings of regret and resentment, it does not turn Roh’s narrative into that of a perfect hero or make excuses for his decision to end his life. Instead, it fills that space with the romance and humor of the man, along with his difficult, tenacious faith in progressive politics, as exemplified by the spirit of the No. 6411 bus. In his 2012 speech accepting the role of co-leader of the Progressive Justice Party (PJP), Roh reminded listeners of the cleaning workers who boarded the first bus of the day at 5:30 am to keep working environments pleasant for other laborers. He stressed that the aims of progressive politics needed to be about others like them who are working in the shadows. Roh wanted to be remembered as someone who ‘loved the workers.’ The world he envisioned was to ensure more than mere survival—to provide the freedom for everyone to enjoy life equally, in what he described as an environment where ‘every citizen can play a musical instrument.’

As much as possible, the documentary strives to present Roh Hoechan and his convictions not in the past tense but in the present progressive. His belief that a progressive party might someday come to power—and practice politics on behalf of the marginalized invisible people of Korean society—has yet to come to pass truly, and defeatism is the furthest thing from the Roh Hoechan spirit. The film thus makes a choice that is both familiar and unusual: it injects a sense of dynamic rhythm, adopting propulsive and passionate rock music for its soundtrack and including fast-paced montage inserts. In between bust-shot interviews with people who knew Roh, it edits in similarly filmed footage of interviews with him as if he was one of the interview participants. This not only reduces the sense of a retrospective and infuses vitality into the lives and activities he was a part of, but also provides an aesthetic means of showing his political legacy as a present-tense phenomenon. CHO HyeYoung

Production MYUNG FILMS (jhbaeck@myungfilm.com), Cinema6411, ROH HOE-CHAN Foundation
Distribution Little Big Pictures (sales@little-big.co.kr), Cinema6411
International Sales MYUNG FILMS (jhbaeck@myungfilm.com/031-930-6508)