Hong Sang-soo won the award for best director for “Nowhere to Lay My Eyes,” while the film’s star Kim Min-hee won the award for best performance, at the 79th Locarno Film Festival.
The awards mark both Hong and Kim’s second wins in the same categories at the international film festival annually held in Locarno, Switzerland.
“I thank the director for making such a beautifully poetic movie,” Kim said while receiving the Pardo for Best Performance award at the ceremony on Saturday.
“Nowhere to Lay My Eyes,” the 35th feature by Hong, had its world premiere Thursday in the International Competition at the Locarno Film Festival.
Kim and Hong, who had a son in April last year, made their first official public appearance together in six months. They had last appeared together in February when Hong’s previous film, “The Day She Returns,” was invited to the Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival.
“I worked on this film after taking about two years off andhaving a baby,” Kim said during aconversation with the audience after the screening of the film. “I breastfed on set and made baby food. I was incredibly busy, getting up before everyone else to prepare everything for the baby before getting ready to shoot.”
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“Nowhere to Lay My Eyes” marked Hong’s fifth appearance in Locarno’s International Competition. He first competed at the festival with “Our Sunhi” (2013), which earned him the Best Director award.
“Right Now, Wrong Then” (2015) — Hong’s first film with Kim — won both the Golden Leopard, the festival’s top honor, and the Best Actor award for Jung Jae-young.
Kim won the Best Performance award at Locarno two years ago for Hong’s “By the Stream” (2024).
She said she welcomed the changes she experienced after becoming a working mother.
“My state of mind was very different from before, when I was completely immersed in films,” Kim said during a conversation with the audience after the screening. “I thought it was healthy to naturally finish everything I needed to do for the baby and then give my best to the film. Rather than obsessing over beauty or trying too hard to make myself look a certain way, I was living this very busy life, fully enjoying it and embracing each moment with joy.”
She added that her state of mind may also haveshaped the character in the film.
Divorce, a recurring subject in Hong’s recent films, again plays a central role in “Nowhere to Lay My Eyes.” Hong has been married since 1985 and has a daughter with his wife. He has not divorced her. In 2015 he met Kim Min-hee on the set of “Right Now, Wrong Then.” The two began a relationship, and in 2017, while Hong was still married, they acknowledged it publicly.
In the new film, Kim plays Sang-hee, a filmmaker and the daughter of divorced parents. Raised by her grandparents, Sang-hee travels to Jeju Island to see her mother, played by Choi Myung-gil, for the first time in 10 years. Her mother, who has built a successful restaurant business, is disappointed that her daughter, whom she sent abroad to study art, now makes independent films that bring in little money.
Choi, known largely for television dramas such as “Tears of the Dragon” (1996) and “Empress Myeongseong” (2001), makes her first appearance in a Hong film, portraying the subtle emotional distance between mother and daughter. “Nowhere to Lay My Eyes” also marks her first film role in 32 years, since melodrama “Rosy Life” (1994).
Sang-hee’s stepfather, played by Kwon Hae-hyo, has spent 10 years making a documentary about love and memory centered on chobun, a traditional island funeral practice in which a body is temporarily placed above ground and covered with grass or straw rather than immediately buried.
Sang-hee, however, is deeply skeptical of documentaries that present themselves as factual.
“Documentaries that pretend to be factual are an even bigger fraud than works of fiction,” she says.
The film shows the family spending three days and two nights together amid Jeju’s unpredictable weather, while exploring the tension between creative work and parental responsibility.
Hong said in his director’s note that the idea for the film came to him during an earlier trip to Jeju.
“I decided to shoot the film when Kim Min-hee and I once stayed at a vacation rental on Jeju,” he said. “I returned to Jeju with Kim Min-hee and Choi Myung-gil, stayed for 10 days and finished shooting in six days.”
At a press conference, Kim was asked by a foreign reporter whether Sang-hee, who also makes films, was another version of Hong himself.
“The desire to put things you find beautiful into a film is similar to the director,” Kim said.
Kim, who is also credited as production manager on the film, spoke about how her life with Hong and their filmmaking have become intertwined.
“Living together is making films together, and it’s what we do together,” Kim said. “It feels like cooking and eating meals together. I don’t want anything more than that.”
Overseas reviews of the film have been largely favorable. U.S. film publication In Review Online noted that Hong’s films often play with familiar cinematic grammar and described “Nowhere to Lay My Eyes” within that tradition of structural experimentation.
Outlook India, meanwhile, singled out Kim’s performance, writing, “Thanks to Kim Min-hee’s subtly alert performance, we can register just the right subliminal sharp breaths Sang-hee must take whenever she’s judged.”
Founded in 1946, the Locarno Film Festival has long championed auteur-driven and experimental cinema. Korean films have won honors there since Bae Yong-kyun’s “Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?” (1989) became the first Korean film to win the Golden Leopard in 1989. Korean cinema has continued to win honors at the festival, including an Excellence Award for actor Song Kang-ho in 2019.
This year’s International Competition featured 17 films, including new works by emerging Asian filmmakers such as Vietnam’s Le Bao and Singapore’s Nelson Yeo. Last year’s Golden Leopard went to Japanese film “Two Seasons, Two Strangers” (2025), starring Korean actor Shim Eun-kyung.
The Golden Leopard carries a cash prize of 75,000 Swiss francs ($92,000).
“Nowhere to Lay My Eyes” is set for release in Korea later this year.
Updated, Aug. 16:Updated with award information and additional comments from Kim Min-hee.
