Kim Min-Ha Compels In Chilling Thriller ‘A Girl With Closed Eyes’

It’s rare that a mystery moves viewers to tears. Yet that’s the beauty of A Girl With Closed Eyes. The film debuting at the 2025 New York Asian Film Festival invites viewers to solve a murder mystery while experiencing a succession of illuminating and emotional shifts in perspective. The film opens with an admired author reading from his bestselling true crime novel. His writing is eloquent. Poetic and stark. He reads a scene from his book A Girl With Closed Eyes, which is set during a brutally cold winter.

His novel is based on a real-life case, involving a victim named In-seon. She was kidnapped and eventually managed to escape, but would not speak about what happened to her. Audiences devour his novel and they want more of the same. More horrifying true crime narratives. They won’t get them. That night the novelist is murdered.

So, who killed him? It seems clear at first. The oddly detached Kim Min-ju (Kim Min-ha) is caught at the scene of the crime. Everything points to her as the killer—she was standing there with the shotgun in her hand—but that’s just the way she wants it.

As to explaining her motive, she insists that she will only talk to one police officer, Park Min-ju (Choi Hee-seo), a woman known for being a whistleblower. Is Kim Min-ju related to the real crime the novelist wrote about and the girl who was his victim? And if that’s true, how does police officer Park Min-ju fit into the puzzle. Kim Min-ju insinuates that the writer, Jeong Seong-Woo (Lee Ki-woo), is the actual kidnapper featured in his novel. Yet she does not offer any new evidence. A lack of evidence is why the case was closed 20 years ago.

A Girl With Closed Eyes is not just a well-crafted puzzle expertly fitting together the best and darkest examples of human nature, it’s also an examination of how victims of well-documented crimes continue to be victimized by the media and the people who read their stories. In-seon’s victimization does not end when she escaped. Her neighbors and classmates victimize her by accusing her of lying when she refuses to identify her kidnapper. Her neighbors’ animosity forces her family to move to Seoul. Even if In-seon wanted to forget her horrifying experience, the memories are revived with the publication of the novel A Girl With Closed Eyes.

“Salvation only comes when all is over,” the murdered novelist was fond of saying and Kim Min-ju wants some closure even if it won’t absolve her.

All the actors in this drama so convincingly and ferociously play their parts, it’s easy to identify with their internal chaos. Kim Min-ha beautifully conveys Min-ju in her moments of hopelessness and through her random acts of courage. Kim, who appeared in the first two seasons of Pachinko, the rom com Way Back Love and the ghost story Light Shop.plays Min-ju with a heartbreaking sense of gravity. Choi, who appeared in Now We Are Breaking Up and Big Forest, plays her character with self-protective restraint, but she nevertheless delivers an emotional punch at the film’s conclusion. Lee Ki-woo (My Liberation Notes, Rain or Shine and Flower Boys Ramen Shop) plays the polished popular author who benefits from true crime.

From its tranquil opening to its dizzyingly intense conclusion, A Girl With Closed Eyes is a memorable debut by director Chun Sun-young. Think you know who did it? Think again.

A Girl With Closed Eyes opens at the New York Asian Film Festival on July 17. The 24th edition of NYAFF runs from July 11 to July 27 across four NYC venues—Film at Lincoln Center, SVA Theatre, LOOK Cinemas W57, and the Korean Cultural Center NY. This year’s theme is “Cinema as Disruption,” spotlighting films that challenge, provoke, and reimagine. A Girl with Closed Eyes fits neatly into this theme as it prompts viewers to reimagine a crime and the role media plays in haunting victims.