A DAY

하루

Directed by Cho Sun-ho

Asia Pop! / South Korea / 2017 / Thriller / 90 mins / Korean with English subtitles / DCP / US Premiere

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A DAY

UltraStar Mission Valley
Wednesday, Nov 15, 2017 8:45PM

A DAY

UltraStar Mission Valley
Thursday, Nov 16, 2017 6:00PM

Description

Official Selection, 2017 Fantasia International Film Festival

World famous doctor Jun-young knows that the one wound he can’t mend is the one his constant absence has left in his daughter’s heart. Today though he flies home and intends to spend some quality time with her. That is, until a speeding car collides into her first.

And then Jun-young wakes up and it’s the same morning again. With the same outcome. As he frantically figures out that he’s stuck in a horrific time loop, he realizes that each morning is a new chance to rewrite fate. He also discovers that he’s not alone: another man in his repeating story is living in a loop of his own. If they’re going to solve this time-warp mystery together, their loops will have to intersect.

The inventively thrilling A DAY is Groundhog Day with the narrative structure of a video game with endless lives, a cycle of problems failed and solved to unlock subsequent challenges. Jun-young’s quest is ours as well, an interactive puzzle to piece together relationships, identify heroes and villains, and remember ways around dead-ends and diversions. First-time director Cho Sun-ho doggedly grinds his characters, sweaty and disheveled, through a temporal ringer that collects ever more narrative complexity until the raging climax. –Brian Hu