Director July Jung Confronts A Societal Problem In ‘Next Sohee’

When July Jung made her film Next Sohee she suspected that her preferred methods of storytelling would not result in the film becoming a blockbuster. Yet, taking cinematic risks to convey an important message has paid off with multiple awards and nominations.

One of the unconventional aspects of Next Sohee is that the film relays its story in two parts. The first half focuses on Sohee, a high school student with few prospects who takes a job at a call center. As part of her job she must persuade consumers to sign on for unwanted services, but no matter how zealously she masters the con, it’s impossible to achieve the company’s goals. Unable to meet such arbitrary goals she decides to take her own life. The second part of the film focuses on a police investigator named Yoo-jin, who wants to understand why Sohee committed suicide. She suspects that it has to be someone’s fault, but no one is willing to take responsibility. The story was partly inspired by a real incident that Jung uses to explore larger issues. Who is to blame for this kind of soul-deadening exploitation?

“I actually had no idea of this incident when it first happened, to be honest,” said Jung. “While I was making the movie, I came across this incident and I learned more about it. And the more I looked into the details of this incident, I realized that none of these details were coincidental. All of this was just a reflection of how all of society is at fault, including myself. This is merely not just a coincidental incident, but it’s more of a structural problem.”

Although the story is set in a small office and focuses on one individual, Jung sees it as a reflection on society, how having unrealistic expectations in a highly competitive society can work against individuals getting the basic human respect they deserve.

“I think that was the reflection that I was trying to derive from this story,” she said.

Sohee wants to succeed at her job, but can’t because of the company’s odd ranking system, which is also a con designed to benefit the corporation. She wonders what she’s doing wrong and without any clear answers assumes she’s to blame. Although Yoo-jin has some authority, being a detective, she also faces obstacles in discovering the truth, including colleagues who want to close the case and corporate spokespeople who refuse to take any responsibility. Splitting the narrative allowed viewers to first spend time with Sohee and understand her motivations.

“When telling the story, I really focused on a few things and the first thing I wanted to focus on was what happened to this girl, what her life was like that it led her to commit suicide,” said Jung.

She also wanted to stress that Sohee is not the first person to be exploited in this way and it can still happen to others.

“I wanted to depict this in a way the audience can see the daily life of Sohee in the first half of the movie, what kind of environment she’s living in, what kind of work she’s doing, what kind of hardships she’s suffering,” said Jung. “In the later half of the movie when Yoo-jin starts investigating and we start going backwards with Sohee’s story, that comparison shows the reflection of the same societal problem. And although the problem is not resolved by Yoo-jin in the end, I think that’s the message it’s supposed to send, where it could happen to anyone. And at any time.”

For the role of Yoo-jin, Jung enlisted actress Bae Doona. Jung worked with Bae in her 2014 film A Girl At My Door, which won Jung a Best Director Award at the 51st Baeksang Arts Awards. In both films Bae plays a police investigator. In A Girl At My Door Bae’s character protects a bullied and abused girl, played by Kim Sae-ron. The collaboration between Bae (Cloud Atlas, Kingdom, Stranger) and Jung also won Bae several Best Actress awards and nominations.

“Working with her has been like a dream,” said Jung. “I’m very, very lucky to have worked with her, especially a big star like her.”

Jung acknowledges that its a challenge when a character is introduced halfway through a movie, as Bae’s character was.

“It’s difficult because it’s hard to explain to the audience who this person is, the details about this person, and the audience can be confused a lot of times,” said Jung. “I thought that Doona is the only one who could really deliver these emotions without any dialogue or anything, but just simply through her face and her facial expressions to this extreme level of detail. So that’s why I was very, very happy to work with her again.”

Casting Bae was a given, but Jung was sure that finding a young actress to play Sohee would require multiple auditions and readings. That did not turn out to be the case with Kim Si-eun (Squid Game 2, Run-On, Mental Coach Jegal).

“Actually she was the first person who came to audition and immediately from that meeting I knew that we would be working together,” said Jung. “When I first met her it wasn’t really like I knew right away that she would fit just from seeing her or seeing her acting, but rather this came through a simple conversation that I had with her. And the question that I asked her was a very simple question. How do you like the scenario? How do you like the script? And I was very surprised by her response when she said, ‘I want this story to be told to the world.’”

Between Girl At My Door and Next Sohee, Jung had time to think about her priorities. After finishing A Girl At My Door, many people expected her to work on large scale commercial projects.

“I was actually more interested in smaller films that really focus on telling the story,” said Jung. “Smaller independent films.”

In the time between A Girl At My Door and Next Sohee the film industry has changed significantly for Korea’s female filmmakers.

“When A Girl At My Door first debuted, it was hard for a female director to even debut,” said Jung. “So I was very, very lucky to be able to have debuted it. However, after that things actually got a lot more progressive. For example, the biggest thing is that there has been a new grant and fund support for women directors to produce films and create more opportunities. This was also the influence of the Me Too movement, which was a global movement. And I think due to these kinds of changes in the way the funding and the society works, we’ve moved a lot forward. And of course, mainstream films, having large commercial films, we’re still lacking female directors in that area. But definitely since then in the independent film scene, we’ve been able to see a lot more female directors.”

Next Sohee was released in Korea in 2023, winning Jung several awards and nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay. The film hits U.S. and Canadian theaters on May 16 and will be available on streaming platforms at a later date. The film is distributed by Echelon Studios and Zurty Studios.