by REERA YOO | @reeraboo
editor@charactermedia.com
South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo‘s film Right Now, Wrong Then took home two prizes at Switzerland’s 68th Locarno Film Festival on Saturday.
Right Now, Wrong Then is a bittersweet romantic comedy that uses a time loop to tell the story of a film director and a painter meeting over the course of one day. The film portrays the couple’s romantic encounter twice with different outcomes by changing slight details in the second half of the film.
Hong Sang-soo with Golden Leopard (Photo via Locarno Film Festival)
Hong won the Golden Leopard award, the top honor at the festival’s international section, for his 17th feature-length film. This is Hong’s second time winning an award at the Swiss festival since he won best director for his 2013 film Our Sunhi. He is only the second director to take home the Leopard after Bae Yong-kyun, who was recognized for his 1989 film Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?.
Actor Jung Jae-young also won best actor for his performance in Right Now, Wrong Then. He is the first Korean male actor to win that honor at Locarno. In 2001, actress Kim Ho-jung won best actress with dystopian indie film Nabi.
Interestingly enough, this year’s best actress award was split among the four leading ladies of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s slice-of-life drama Happy Hour: Sachie Tanaka, Hazuki Kikuchi, Maiko Mihara and Rira Kawamura.
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Featured image via Locarno Film Festival
