When Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors was selected as the opening film for the 1st Jeonju International Film Festival in 2000, not many people would have predicted what director Hong Sangsoo would do next. Surely, after the most shocking debut film in Korean film history, The Day a Pig Fell Into a Well (1996) and an equally innovative second film, The Power of Kangwon Province (1998), expectations for his third film, Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, were high. However, who would have anticipated that he would become such a prolific director, who continues to make global critics pay attention to each of his films? A Traveler’s Needs (2024), which won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, is his 31st feature film. Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors depicts the process of a relatively older man and a young woman falling in love and is divided in 5 parts. While parts 1 and 2 are told from the man’s perspective, parts 3 and 4 are about the woman’s memories. Part 5 tells the story from no specific person’s perspective. At first glance, it seems to be a composition that changes depending on each person’s point of view, as in Rashomon (1950), but this is the result of the director’s intention to create an “anti-artificial story”. Just seeing the late Lee Eunju, who played Soojung, again is exciting. (MOON Seok)