Within the subtle intimacy of Kim Jong-kwan’s films lies an entire universe. His cinema captures the delicate spaces between people; the brief moments of longing, love, hesitation, and loss. The South Korean filmmaker, a graduate of the Seoul Institute of the Arts, has built a reputation for making films of profound emotional delicacy. From his early short films to his feature debut Worst Woman (2016), which won the FIPRESCI Award at the Moscow International Film Festival, Kim’s oeuvre has always been a tender examination of human fragility, conveyed with elegance.

With Frosted Window, which had its world premiere as the Opening Film of the 20th London Korean Film Festival, Kim turns once again to the fragmented language of the anthology format. Composed of three interwoven stories – Out Walking, Breather, and Mari – the film stars Yeon Woo-jin, Chang Ryul, Lee Chung-ah, Ok Ja-yeon, Joo Jong-hyuk, and Jeon So-young. It is a beautiful study on love, loss, and the imperfections that define what it means to be human. Among the figures that populate Kim’s latest work are an artist consumed by an unfulfilled longing for connection, a writer haunted by the spectre of creative failure, and an actress enduring the solitude that follows grief.

For Kim, returning to London was special. “To come to the London Korean Film Festival for its 20th anniversary, and to be the opening film at a historical venue like the BFI, I’m very grateful,” he said when we met on the eve of the premiere. “This is the fifth time that I’ve shared a film here in London, and it has a huge meaning for me. To meet the UK audience again, and to show them this film for the first time, I’m so delighted.”

I want to show the trivial, everyday anxieties of being human – the awkwardness and loneliness that arise naturally. I live in these spaces; I walk through them; I observe them every day. Creating stories on top of these familiar moments is, for me, a kind of joy.

That delight, however, is laced with a reflection. Kim’s cinema thrives on observation, on what he calls “the instability of humanity.” His characters rarely announce their desires outright; instead, they reveal themselves through various actions. “I feel quite attracted to the instability of human nature,” he explained thoughtfully. “By making very subtle observations around this, I want to show it in a story. Because they deal with universal feelings, even though my films are set in Korea, I’m always curious how audiences in other countries might resonate with these emotions.”

While often compared to the sensibilities of French auteurs such as Éric Rohmer and Jacques Demy, Kim resists being neatly categorised. “It’s not just French cinema that has influenced me,” he said. “I’ve been affected by a diverse range of films. If I’ve been influenced by French cinema, it’s probably in the way they portray human beings – the small, ordinary, but universal emotions. I love films like that, and those are the types of films I want to make.”

His attention to environment – ordinary places like cafés, narrow streets, or quiet studios – frames his characters’ inner worlds in lived reality. In Frosted Window, the city is both backdrop and mirror, reflecting the anxieties and tenderness of its inhabitants. “By using ordinary spaces, the incidents that happen there aren’t full of big conflict,” Kim explained. “I want to show the trivial, everyday anxieties of being human – the awkwardness and loneliness that arise naturally. I live in these spaces; I walk through them; I observe them every day. Creating stories on top of these familiar moments is, for me, a kind of joy.”

This is the fifth time that I’ve shared a film here in London, and it has a huge meaning for me. To meet the UK audience again, and to show them this film for the first time, I’m so delighted.

This thoughtfulness extends to his collaboration with actors, particularly his long-time creative partner Yeon Woo-jin. “This is the fourth time I’ve worked with Yeon, and I really trust what he brings to the screen,” Kim shared with sincerity. “When I direct or write, I don’t fixate on specific situations. I only have a general flow of the story. The film is called Frosted Window, and it’s the first time where, even though I might have an outline of the story or an image of a character, it feels like seeing something blurred through the glass. You can only begin to see it clearly when you’re filming. That’s why you must trust your actors completely. I give them a simple story – and then, I trust them.”

It is this trust, in his actors, in uncertainty, and in the audience, that shapes Kim’s filmmaking. His films don’t require you to fully understand them; they want you to reflect. Like the faint outlines behind a frosted pane, his stories reveal their shapes only when we slow down and look closely.

With Frosted Window, Kim has created another little gem, one that proves that he is one of Korea’s most poetic and perceptive storytellers. His lens, delicate yet precise, reminds us that the beauty of life often lies in the intimate spaces between what we see and what we feel.

Written and interviewed by Maggie Gogler

Featured image © Nicole Rayo for View of the Art

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