International interest is building around a group of Korean and Japanese festival films heading into Toronto, with Hong Sangsoo’s Nowhere to Lay My Eyes leading the way after a major Locarno run. The feature, Hong’s 35th as director, has been acquired for distribution in North America, the United Kingdom, Spain, China, Austria and Taiwan.
The title’s sales momentum follows its appearance in the Concorso Internazionale competition at the 79th Locarno Film Festival. It left the event with three honors: the Pardo for Best Direction, the Pardo for Best Performance and the Ecumenical Jury Prize. For a filmmaker with a long, distinctive body of work, that combination of awards and territory-by-territory pickups gives the film a notably broad next step beyond the festival circuit.
Six territories for Hong Sangsoo’s latest feature
Nowhere to Lay My Eyes will be represented by Cinema Guild in North America, Institute of Contemporary Arts in the U.K., Atalante in Spain, Hugoeast in China, Filmgarten in Austria and Cola Films in Taiwan. These are distribution agreements, not release-date announcements, so audiences in each territory will need to wait for their respective distributor to set theatrical, streaming, physical-media or other plans.
The film centers on a woman who goes to see her mother after a decade apart. Her brother accompanies her, and the siblings spend two days with their mother’s new family. That deliberately contained setup puts a fractured family relationship at the heart of the story: time has passed, familiar people are no longer entirely familiar, and even a brief visit can carry the accumulated weight of years.
The run of acquisitions also reflects how festival recognition can help a film travel without turning it into a one-size-fits-all international product. A deal in a territory establishes a local route to viewers; it does not mean a simultaneous global rollout. Still, six agreements spanning Asia, Europe and North America ensure that this particular family drama has an unusually wide framework for reaching specialist cinema audiences.
‘Long Long Night’ brings a 3D animated debut to Toronto
Another title in the group is Long Long Night, the feature directing debut of Youm Kyu Bock. The 3D animated film has been pre-sold to Japan’s Geek Pictures Inc. before its world premiere in Toronto’s Centrepiece selection. After Toronto, it is set to continue to the Busan International Film Festival competition lineup and then compete in the Anima’t section at Sitges.
Its festival path is especially notable because it moves through events with very different identities. Toronto offers a large international showcase, Busan provides a major platform in the Asian film calendar, and Sitges is strongly associated with genre cinema. Animation often crosses those boundaries in interesting ways, and Long Long Night is positioned to meet viewers in each of those environments before any wider release details are confirmed.
The film adapts a bestselling Korean novel inspired by a true story. The book has sold more than 800,000 copies and was included on the International Youth Library’s 2021 White Ravens list in Munich. The premise includes the friendship between a penguin and the last rhino on Earth, with the story emphasizing empathy, care and the choice to live for another person or creature.
Geek Pictures Inc. said that a 15-minute promotional presentation made an immediate impression, particularly through the film’s imagery, its connection to the original story and the relationship between the rhino and penguin.
That early response helps explain the Japanese pre-sale, but it should not be mistaken for a full public availability plan. The confirmed facts are the Japanese acquisition and the three named festival stops. The eventual format, date and scope of the Japanese release have not been specified here.
July Jung’s ‘Dora’ continues a Cannes-to-Busan route
The third major completed-sales title is Dora, director July Jung’s third feature. The film premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes and has now been selected for the Gala presentation lineup at the Busan International Film Festival. It has been sold to Geek Pictures Inc. in Japan and Light Year Images in Taiwan.
Jung’s Cannes record is a significant part of the context: she is identified as the first Korean woman director to have three consecutive features selected for the festival. With Dora, she brings together Kim Doyeon in the title role and Japanese actor Ando Sakura. Ando is known to many international viewers through Godzilla Minus One, Monster and Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters.
The pairing gives the project a cross-border cast at a time when its festival and sales activity is also extending across borders. Cannes, Busan, Japan and Taiwan form a clear chain in the film’s immediate story. As with the other acquisitions, however, the sales information does not provide audience release dates or specify whether the distributors will use theaters, streaming platforms, home video or a mixture of formats.
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Two additional projects join the Toronto presentation
The slate also includes two titles being introduced during Toronto: animated adventure Guardians of the Video Game and Japanese horror-thriller Wash Away. The former is based on a webtoon reported to have reached 345 million views worldwide. That audience figure signals a substantial built-in readership, although no cast, release plan or platform information is provided with the introduction.
Guardians of the Video Game has a title that will naturally catch the eye of game-focused audiences, but it is important not to overstate the connection. The available information identifies it as an animated adventure adapted from a webtoon, rather than confirming a video game adaptation, a playable tie-in or a particular gaming platform. For now, it is a screen project drawing from a widely viewed digital-comics property.
Wash Away, meanwhile, takes a much darker route. Its story follows a couple on a lakeside getaway that becomes threatening as they encounter a resort community convinced its water can cleanse the soul. The setup blends a contained relationship scenario with a belief system that may turn the setting itself into a source of danger.
The film is Miyahara’s feature debut. Miyahara previously had the short film Suck selected for the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. Wash Away is slated to premiere in the Panorama section of the Sitges Film Festival, placing the debut in a lineup well suited to a horror-thriller built around isolation, ritual and an ominous retreat.
What the sales and selections establish
The immediate news is about circulation, not a promise that every title will arrive everywhere at once. Nowhere to Lay My Eyes has six confirmed territory deals following its three Locarno prizes. Long Long Night has a Japanese pre-sale and confirmed Toronto, Busan and Sitges appearances. Dora has Japanese and Taiwanese agreements after Cannes and before its Busan Gala screening. Guardians of the Video Game and Wash Away are being introduced at Toronto, with the latter also headed for Sitges.
That is a varied package: a veteran director’s family drama, a first-time filmmaker’s 3D animation, an acclaimed director’s third feature, a webtoon-based adventure and a Japanese genre debut. The shared thread is not a single genre or audience, but an international festival route that can give distributors and viewers several points of entry. As Toronto, Busan and Sitges unfold, the next information to watch for will be territory-specific release decisions rather than assumptions based solely on festival selection.
