SUNRISE/SUNSET

After failing his university entrance exams for the third year in a row, Min Suk, a directionless twenty-something Korean man, travels to New York to visit his long-distance girlfriend Yeon Jae. Over the course of a rollercoaster week, he experiences both the thrill of losing himself in a new city and the bitter realization that his relationship is gradually imploding. After a visit to Columbia University, Min Suk considers applying to schools in America, but when the fantasy of a fresh beginning as a New York college student collides with the grueling reality of the entrance exams, he begins to retreat again into uncertainty. 

Shot in elegiac black and white, director Jong Ougie Park recontextualizes the all-too-familiar landmarks of New York City—Washington Square Park, Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge—rendering alluring yet impersonal monuments of a foreign city that Min Suk knows he is only passing through. Caught between South Korea and New York, Sunrise/Sunset subtly explores the liminal space not only between cultures, but between the possibilities of adolescence and the realities of adulthood.

“...captures the  beauty and loneliness of [NYC] in gorgeous black-and-white photography.” - Dan Schoenbrun, Filmmaker Magazine