SFFL 2023: Past Lives

Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrest apart after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Twelve years later, Nora, now a playwriting student in New York, reconnects with Hae Sung online; they begin talking frequently, and even imagine a reunion. But another dozen years pass before they finally meet over a few fateful days in New York. 

An aching, deeply romantic debut feature from playwright Celine Song (Endlings), Past Lives is a love story — indeed, several — told across three moments in time. Song’s artful aesthetic and profound character writing, and the spellbinding performances she draws from Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, and John Magaro, explore love, identity, and “In Yun,” a Korean notion of fate stemming from two people’s connection in a past life.