The Way Fish Breathe

Feature 4

RYU Seung-won | 2023 | Fiction | Color | DCP | 77min (E) World Premiere

SYNOPSIS

Unable to adapt to his stepfamily, Seung-won leaves home on turning 20, to live in a small theater company in pursue of his dream of becoming an actor. Years later, while continuing his life at the theater company, he hears the news of his father's death, who he had not met for seven years. He impulsively leaves the theater company and returns to the house where his biological family used to live. One day, his stepsister Ga-hyeon visits Seung-won to ask him to return to his stepmother's house, so that she could leave home to prepare for the civil servant exam. Seung-won feels anxious about his family and dream again.

DIRECTING INTENTION

I had met a musician in Busan. While we were both drunk and talking about random things, he said, "You have a dream. It’s normal to dream at your age.” In fact, it was good not to have to dream, when I was drunk. When I woke up, I had to live for my dream again. It's considered good to have a dream, but living for it can be tiring as days go by. Will I be able to achieve my dream? Maybe it’s all going to turn out to be meaningless, after realizing that I had gone after a false dream. Sometimes I envy those people without dreams. They’d say, "At least you have something you want to do" and start running in similar directions.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that those with dreams are special, and those without are ordinary. Regardless of whether one has a dream or not, forces of reality make young people run, and tire them out eventually. All those running as such, are all only ordinary individuals. And the reason they’d stop running, would turn out to be the most minor of all reasons: “I just stopped". They’d get lost in such pauses. This is what an ordinary person goes through in this society.
Then, what can the smallest unit of this society, a family, supposedly the most intimate, mean to ordinary young people? Compared to the previous generations, does the families of today, have the power to make those who wander, return? Can these young people, pushed by the forces of reality, stay purely as members of this society, as families?

FESTIVAL & AWARDS

World Premiere

DIRECTOR
RYU Seung-won

RYU Seung-won

2021 Deepsleep Coffee

STAFF

Director RYU Seung-won
Producer LEE Myung-kyo
Screenwriter RYU Seung-won
Cinematographer KIM Chan-woo
Editor RYU Seung-won
Lighting WON Ki-ryun
Sound NAM Ho-jin
Art Director YOON Hee-jung
Music JANG Hyun-ho(HAENO)
Cast RYU Seung-won, JUNG Ga-hyun, LEE Young-seok