MAIFF 2026  -

KFFC

In The Sea of Strange Thoughts

June 13

Cinema Moderne

Documentary

115

minutes

Korean

Content Warning:

About the Film

Director

Choi Jeongdan

Country

South Korea

Year

2025

Program

Curated by

Description

A 21-year chronicle exploring the strange life and the cosmic thinking about death and life of Kim Uchang, one of Korea's foremost thinkers, who leads a life in complete agreement with his scholarly philosophy. For 40 years, he has been living with his wife Sul Soonbong in a house with lots of steps and a leaky roof, where the open sky and the mountains can be seen. His children urge him to move, but he has no such intention. It’s because, according to his children, Kim believes that what remains unchanged is ethically right and that comfort is evil. The house, therefore, represents Kim himself. He keeps all the things inherited from his parents. One day, an accident occurs, leaving his wife bedridden. He runs the household by himself, but as his own body grows frail, caring for his wife becomes an arduous struggle. He is engrossed in thought, trying to write his final book, 『The Horizon of Things and Being』, but has yet to deliver the manuscript to the publisher. What meaning do things and his house hold for him? Can he ever complete his final book?

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About the Director
Choi Jeongdan
Director
CHOI Jeongdan(1967, South Korea) met Kim Uchang as his student and began documenting him in 2004. She played the lead role in the Busan International Film Festival Critics’ Choice opening film <The Butterfly Mole> (2008) and handled the Korean side agency for the Swedish documentary <The Korean War and the Swedish People> (2018). To complete the documentary about Kim Uchang, her old college and graduate school professor, she founded Siwol Pictures, the production company, in 2014 and invested all her personal funds into producing the film. After 21 years of documenting Kim Uchang, she collected fragments of the everyday life of the “reclusive thinker” to complete <In the Sea of Strange Thoughts>.
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Awards & Festival Recognition

Busan International Film Festival, Seoul Independent Film Festival

Press & Articles