The Book of Fish

“Born as noble, one dreams to be humble. Born as humble, the other dreams to be noble.”

Sent to Heuksando Island during the Catholic Persecution of 1801, the scholar Jeong Yak-jeon (Sul Kyung-gu) sets out to write an encyclopaedia of the fish in the surrounding sea. He knows books but not these waters, so he turns to the local fisherman Chang-dae (Byun Yo-han), who knows the fish and has little use for the written word. Lee Joon-ik shoots it in black and white, and the exile unfolds in plain grays.