Dongju: The Portrait of a Poet

“The poems that are untold, the youth that is unfinished.”

Korea is under Japanese rule, and the poet Yun Dong-ju (Kang Ha-neul) is a young man with a pen and little else to work with. His cousin Song Mong-gyu (Park Jeong-min) writes too, but chooses the Independence Movement, and the two are drawn together and then pulled apart. Lee Joon-ik shoots in black and white, so the film reaches us as ink on paper, a poem written out line by line.