In the cold of winter, a man walks tearfully along a path as the snow falls around him.

I wrote a script with this as the dominant image: walking along a snowy path. I can still remember one middle-aged viewer I met after the film was completed and invited to show at a film festival in the Chinese city of Fuzhou. He explained that he was a businessman from Hong Kong who had happened to stop at the theater while on a business trip. His eyes were bloodshot from crying after watching the film. He explained that he had long been an alcoholic and was now clean. He said that watching the movie had been painful for him as he kept recalling his experiences, but it was also comforting, and he wanted to express his gratitude for making it. It made me feel like it meant something to have this film out there in the world, if only for the sake of that one viewer.

For me, this is what film meant: something that bounces back like a distant echo to strike someone to the core and leave its mark. It's a slow process that takes a lot of time, but I hope it reaches someone and leaves its mark like the trunk of a tree. I'd also like people to join in asking the same question: what lies at the end of the path awaiting the protagonist as he trudges tearfully along the snowy path in the winter cold?

I am delighted and honored that Snow Paths is being screened for the 10th anniversary of the JEONJU Cinema Project. The theme and subject matter of the film are such that it is unlikely to have ever been made with the support of the JEONJU Cinema Project. I look forward to seeing various other films being made and released with the JEONJU Cinema Project's help so that they can leave their mark on even more viewers. KIM Hee-Jung

Grape Candy (2012), A French Woman (2019), Where Would You Like to Go? (2023)

A Gesture of Prayer
Prayer is the simplest of things, but it is also the purest for that very reason. If someone prays daily for your soul's sake, can that be expressed in other terms besides love? In Snow Paths, at least, prayer and love united into a single line. Like the beauty of life or a form of salvation, it feels like salvation is present within that connection. Continuing here also are the things that have flickered through director Kim Heejung's past cinematic work: the sense of absence and the death of cherished loved ones, such as parents or close friends. There is also the deep density of emotions, such as the guilt, fear, and remorse experienced by those left behind. These do not end up descending into a tragedy because of the perspective of trust in that connection.

Jeong-woo (Kim Taehun) is an alcoholic who suffers from hallucinations. His mother and Maria (Park Sodam) continue sheltering him to the last without turning away from him in his struggles. There is the mother superior and even, in a sense, the Black Madonna of Częstochowa, located in the room at the House of Teresa where Jeong-woo battles himself. These women do not know the meaning of the word forsakes: they draw Jeong-woo toward their world at a moment when he exists as an island unto himself. Physically and emotionally bereft and starved, he is brought back to life literally through these women's hands. The mother's hand that made him forget the snowy winter cold in his youth, the hand of Maria passing him matches and steamed buns, the Mother Superior's hand offering tea… The prayers in those warm hands were here before Jeong-woo was there.

The film establishes close juxtapositions among Jeong-woo's jagged memories of the past, his painful dreams, his delirium, and a reality that feels like it might crack apart at any moment. They are vividly divided, as if the boundary between reality and unreality has broken. When the lost Jeong-woo's fragments of memory start piecing together, we have a hint of the reasons for his suffering. He may once again end up alone and walking through a blizzard, but not in a state of deathly desperation—for this is after he has seen the beauty of connection. It has become a road of return, a story of coming alive. JEONG Ji Hye

Production Inster (inster@inster.kr) 
Distribution Indieplug (tax@indieplug.net)
International Sales M-Line Distribution (sales@mline-distribution.com)

2015 Karlovy Vary IFF Proxima Competition (Nominee)

2016 Russia Yakutsk IFF International Feature Competition (Nominee)

2017 Wildflower Film Awards Korea Best Supporting Actor (Winner)