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Jiyeong Hong came to Tallinn to present her latest feature film “The Waves, The Sound, and Two Lovers In The Middle Of…” in the competition programme Rebels With a Cause. Unique in style and technique, the film stood out as one of the artistically most accomplished titles in this year's selection.

Asian Movie Pulse met the director shortly after the world premiere in Tallinn, to discuss her love of distorted images, dance as a form of protest and ‘otherness'

Could you tell us something about your background?

I have a degree in fine arts and philosophy, but I am not sure if that affected my film style. At the same time, I love to make experimental films which are all queer-themed. I am not trying to re-invent the wheel in terms of experimental style or creating something so far unseen but I use my ideas to speak about queer themes...

“This is a love story, or a vision of the world”, explains a soft spoken voice after a very long (black screen) introduction to Youngjin and Jaeyon – a couple who “with blurred vision or closed eyes, not knowing when or where it can be found, without a plan, search for the paradise.”

“The Waves, The Sand, and Two Lovers in The Middle Of…” is screening at Tallinn Black Nights

In her experimental sophomore feature film “The Waves, The Sand, and Two Lovers in The Middle Of…” that has just had its world premiere in the Rebels With A Cause competition section of Tallinn Black Nights, Korean helmer Jiyeong Hong tells a tale of lovers, non-beings who fail to meet the expectations of “normativity”. A director who is rooted in arts, partially leans on her dance film project titled “Queer E-motion” which focused on the phenomena of “peaceful sleep” in a...

Titles include Kah Wai Lim’s Japanese feature ‘Everything, Everywhere’.

Eight features will have world premieres in the Rebels With A Cause strand of Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (Poff), including new films from Kah Wai Lim and Matias Rojas Valencia.

The competitive section includes 11 features, with two further films playing out of competition.

Scroll down for the full Rebels With A Cause selection

Japanese director Lim presents Everything, Everywhere, a semi-improvised road movie set in the Balkans where Lim typically films, in which Japanese star Shogen plays a fictionalized version of the director.

Lim’s previous films include 2022 comedy-drama...