Director in Person (Daijiga Umule Pajinnal). Hong Sang-Soo's acclaimed first feature opens as a series of apparently unconnected sketches of individuals in present-day Seoul and reveals only gradually how lives are, in fact, interconnected. The acting is one-hundred-percent naturalistic, and the shooting and cutting style coolly modernist. If it had been made in Taiwan, you'd have guessed that Edward Yang had something to do with it. First up is unsuccessful novelist Kim Hyo-Sup, a man with chips on both shoulders, who is having an affair with a married woman, whose businessman husband impulsively calls a prostitute to his hotel room one night only to catch an STD, and so on, through to the girl who tries moonlighting as a voice-artist only to find herself expected to dub the sounds of orgasm for porno tapes. It all adds up to a spot-section of urban society in 1996: the feelings, frustrations, angers, passions, and fears of young, middle-class adults. It's often wryly funny, and it's always devastatingly accurate.-Tony Rayns, Vancouver Int'l Film Festival