A limping old dog lives in a shed in a quiet district of Seoul. If it was human it would be called a hermit. One day the director notices the dog and becomes curious. She talks to neighbours, passers-by, playing children, who all crossed paths with this dog but never noticed it, or came to some banal conclusion and then forgot it again. Their statements are as diverse as witness statements after an accident: if an identikit picture or psychological profile were assembled from them it would be a magnificently grotesque creature – perhaps a hybrid of Quasimodo and the donkey from Bresson’s “Balthazar”.

In the course of the film, though, the statements respectively narratives respectively narrators themselves become more and more interesting. It seems as if every person there (only there?) lives in their own, separate world, rarely intersecting with the worlds of the others. A universe of melancholy. Who can tell what the director’s intention may have been at the start? She may simply, and rightly, have trusted that detours increase your local knowledge. Or followed the aphorism of the great Berlin pub-poet Jürgen K. Hultenreich: “Goals are in the way.”

Ralph Eue

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Golden Dove Next Masters Competition

“Sometimes I think I’m only the tool and poetry is the real protagonist.” Each of the five persons in this film has a special relationship with poetry. To them, poems are the elixir of life, a cure, an escape from the rush of everyday life. None of them were made happy by the consumer society – their dreams were not about money, careers or recognition. They wanted a life without pressures and fears. Poetry has accompanied them on their way to a different kind of existence, gave them strength when their courage failed. The remarkable calm and serenity reflected in their faces says it all: their decisions were right.

In their conversations, Soojung Lee gives her protagonists enough space to get to the core of the subject. In pleasantly associative images the film outlines the intersections where their paths cross. Even if their problems aren’t the same, their irritations have similar roots. The conformist and well-adapted life in the rat race of a society geared towards performance and consumption has its victims. Especially among those who don’t want to fit their souls into pre-determined pigeon-holes. A quiet and delicate film that gives a stage to those who are resolved to follow a different kind of clock.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

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Nominated for Healthy Workplaces Film Award

What to do when there’s no one behind the food stall counter? Grab the waffle dough and serve a long queue of hungry people.

Lina Dinkla