Directed by Lee Chang-dong • 1999 • South Korea
Starring Sul Kyung-gu, Moon So-ri, Kim Yeo-jin

Yongho (Sul Kyung-gu) stares down an oncoming train as twenty years of his life flash before his eyes. Proceeding to move backward in time, Lee’ Chang-dong’s acclaimed second feature rewinds the protagonist’s loss of humanity—from his fraught, self-hating middle age through his callow teens. The moments in between these events, as seen through the lens of Yongho’s agonizing struggles, mirror South Korea’s traumatic political history during the late twentieth century, and in turn elegize a generation of marginalized people to immensely moving effect.