COLUMBUS

Two lives in limbo. While everyone around her is venturing into adulthood, Casey is worried about her former drug addict mother and does not dare make any plans for her own future. Jin, on the other hand, has to leave everything behind in Korea to help her seriously ill, estranged father in America. Casey and Jin meet in Columbus, Indiana – a relatively small city, which nonetheless is world-renowned for its iconographically ambitious modern architecture as well as its art in public spaces. Casey shows Jin her favourite buildings, and Jin shows Casey how to let go.

With Columbus, the Seoul-born Kogonada (a pseudonym and a nod to Ozu's screenwriter Kogo Nada), who previously made a name for himself as a video essayist and film journalist, presents an impressive debut. A densely woven narrative fabric, where buildings acquire the status of characters through the gaze directed at them by the protagonists. And where, conversely, the built-up space gives people whose lives have not yet found a home a sense of consolation and confidence: the clear line of architectural thinking manages to soothe the impenetrable entanglements of their emotions. Not least because order and chaos both have their roots in human nature.