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Cassiopeia is a film Director Shin Yeonshick and Actor Ahn Sungki met again 12 years after The Fair Love. In Cassiopeia, Actor Ahn Sungki plays Inwoo, a father who gets a chance to take care of his daughter belatedly. Inwoo's daughter, Sujin (Seo Hyeonjin), is rapidly losing her memory due to early dementia at the age of 30s. Inwoo helps Sujin repeat her routine. In that way, he teaches his daughter how to walk along the way based on Cassiopeia even in the darkness at night. We interviewed Director Shin Yeonshick to talk about the film and the script. Director Shin Yeonshick’s stories will continue on the screen with One Win, he directed based on the challenge of the women's volleyball team, and COBWEB, he was in charge of the script and the production.

- How did you start writing the script of Cassiopeia? 

= I came up with several stories about father and daughter to work with Actor Ahn Sungki. Among them, I started to write the script of Cassiopeia because it could be done with a relatively small budget. When I was directing The Fair Love, I was really grateful to Ahn Sungki. So, I wrote the script of Cassiopeia from the beginning thinking of him.

- You must have thought a lot about how to describe Alzheimer's symptoms. 

= The symptoms described in the movie are not special. In the movie, a patient goes out alone, climbs over a mountain, and meets his family again, and the patient's family says that it can happen. Actor Seo Hyeonjin and I put a lot of thought into the scenes where we described the symptoms not to hurt Alzheimer’s patients and their families. In fact, Alzheimer's itself is not an important keyword in this movie. Rather, the theme is focused on the ‘reversed nurturing,’ meaning the father takes care of his adult daughter who is becoming a child suffering from Alzheimer’s.

- Instead of dramatic events, the film follows the process of Sujin’s symptoms getting worse. Tell us why you chose the framework of the story, please.

= That was the hardest part. It's not just that there are no dramatic events in the film. Only two actors appear in about a 900sqft house with only one living room and one bedroom. The actors and the director have nowhere to run away in the film. Since the sequence couldn’t be divided into events, we had no choice but to divide it into stages of the symptoms. As Sujin becomes more helpless, she moves away from the world she used to live on her own, and as she becomes more vulnerable, she has no choice but to rely on her father based on the progression of the illness. If we liken the film to a song, it's a song that lasts only 2 minutes and 20 seconds. Since we couldn’t add spectacular events or incidents, we had to compose the film only with psychological states and physical conditions, and the footage shouldn’t be long. We planned a 100-minute-long film, and the actual running time is 101 minutes, just as we intended.

- Inwoo, Sujin’s father, is a rational person. He is not swayed by his daughter's illness and calmly takes care of Sujin. What kind of person did you want to depict from him?

= Life is inherently scrappy itself. Nobody is leading the life of winning every single day. We just overcome the weight of life and support it. No matter what kind of life you live, everyone seems to be the same. Working abroad for more than 30 years, Inwoo must have lived his life with a ‘hardy attitude.’ When his daughter gets sick, the matters in front of him are urgent. Lamenting and resenting his unlucky life in his later years can only happen when he is obsessed with his own life. For Inwoo, the first thing to do is to save his daughter and let her endure her life for herself. I think most parents probably do so. They will focus on the weight of life they have to bear as parents. 

- Although the process of Inwoo caring for his daughter is at the center of the film, he steps down at a crucial moment, and the film pays attention to the relationship between Sujin and Gina, Sujin's daughter. 

= Three generations appear in the movie, but the story is about 4 generations in terms of influence. The line Inwoo said, ‘Someone pays off my debt every moment of my life, and I also pay off someone else’s debt.’ This is actually what Inwoo’s mother said. You can see how parenting affects a person through the characters.

The purpose of parenting is to make a child independent. Parents cannot see the results and the process again, but Inwoo can ask the results. He asks Sujin, ‘Did you wake up at 7 in the morning?’ And he only asks factual questions such as ‘What did you do?’ instead of asking ‘How was it?’ In fact, what Gina says to Sujin is also what Inwoo said to his daughter. It means Gina will grow up well, and she will be strong just like Sujin. However, Sujin can't check those things because she can’t remember them. 

Gina is a child beyond this range of parenting. In fact, family relationships are nearly like that. Parents will feed their children a warm meal with love to wish them good luck on their exams, but the meal does not make them do well on the tests. But you don't get lost in that relationship. I think that's the relationship between parents and children. Gina is a character that goes beyond the results of parenting and confirms the relationship between parents and children. 

- Is there anyone who influenced the script work, including the lines that Inwoo quoted his mother? 

= Frankly, I am affected by a lot of things. I don't really know exactly when, how, and where the lines popped out. The lines or descriptions artificially calculated and written are not good. I tend to do a lot of data research, but rather than trying to use them, I try to embody them in me. I do a lot of data research, but I throw it all away before writing a script. I should use what is left in ‘me’ instead of in my ‘memory.’

- When did you work on the script of Cassiopeia? 

= I started writing the Cassiopeia script almost with the One Win script. I don't write only one script at a time. This is how I write scripts. I write the first draft of a script quickly, take two days off, write another script, take two days off again, write the third one, and then go back to the first script. Some people write scripts with a fixed time, but I have to finish it first when I open it. Once I start writing, I try to write it as fast as I can until the end. And I record the dates when I write the 1st draft and the 2nd draft in my diary.

- The routine of life planted by Inwoo becomes a kind of ‘Cassiopeia’ that protects Sujin. Do you have that kind of routine in life? 

= In the movie, Inwoo mentions his senior, who wears socks on the left foot first. That’s Director Lee Joonik’s routine. There was a time when all Korean film directors wore socks from the left. (Laughs) I heard about the story while having a meal with Director Bong Mandae. Saying we should do a kind of ritual to give every day a meaning before leaving home, Director Bong Mandae talked about Director Lee Joonik’s ritual of wearing socks on the left foot first. And following my own habit, I wear socks from the left as I usually do. (Laughs)

- Tell us about the stage of One Win, your next film. You explained that it's a movie that captures exciting scenes without following the cliched plot of existing sports movies. 

= The second half of the work is almost finished. As the theater district is slowly opening up, we are looking at the timing of distribution. Cassiopeia is a kind of family movie you can watch with your family, but it is not an enjoyable film. On the contrary, you can enjoy One Win with your family lightheartedly. First, the title is a spoiler itself, isn’t it? It can’t be a story that you lose in the end. We can't say, ‘We lost the game at the end, but how come the title is One Win?’ (Laughs) The title shows all the concepts, plots, and themes of the film. Just like Ahn Sungki, Actor Song Kangho has played various roles in filmography, but he didn’t play the role of a sports team coach before the movie. Although he has been working with famous actors, you've never seen him in the poster with the group of the tall young female actors, playing energetic volleyball players.

- What’s your momentum of writing a script?

= It depends on each case. Sometimes, a theme can be momentum or a character, but what the movie director should be most wary of is the ‘image.’ There are cases where we want to make films to express a certain image in a cinematic way. It’s true for me, and we film directors should be the wariest of such a case. There are times when such an image is interrupted in making a story. To save the film we make, we must throw away the image but it’s hard to do that. Compared to images, themes or characters are not that harsh. Rather, the deeper we dig into a character, the better it gets.

- In a word, did Cassiopeia start with the idea of ‘Actor Ahn Sungki becoming a middle-aged father and writing his daughter's parenting diary?’ 

= Yes, my films always have a similar ending. It's about the moment when we realize what we thought the world would be like, but it might not be. Sujin is proud of her life but also has a kind of inferior complex. She thinks it stemmed from her dad, but it may not be true. People want something from the other parties in human relationships. Whether it's a pair of lovers, a couple, or a parent-child relationship, everybody wants something from the opposite, busy blaming each other if things go wrong for them, but it's not really that. I don't think the concept of human relationships itself has to do with doing something for others or not. How we perceive each other's existence seems to matter much more.

- Are you busy writing new scripts now?

= Rather than ‘now,’ that’s what I do all the time. I’m writing about modern Korean history around the 1960s these days. Is there a time when I couldn’t come up with ideas? Almost never. I must say it happened only once in my life. When I first dated my wife, I couldn’t come up with any ideas for about a month but never since then. As becoming a film director, the formats of my creative activities a bit changed, but I have written novels, poems, and drawn cartoons since I was little. I started writing in the form of a script when I was in the first grade of high school. Whether it is published or not, I can write a novel in a notebook and that’s all. But a script doesn’t end with writing it and a movie based on it has to be made. I became a film director because I had to make my scripts into movies. In fact, when I wrote scripts in high school, I didn't think I should make them into movies. In conclusion, the first scripts I wrote in high school were made into a movie and released under the title Like a French Film. 

- Do you have any storyteller you prefer?

= Since dramatic arts are about humans in a specific society, we need characters that reflect society. But I think there are too many movies just for movies. Also, there are too many characters and dramas that are irrelevant to the times. Among the few directors who portray and reflect our society, I think the Coen brothers are the ones who follow the route steadily. I have never seen their films ‘not good’ enough. It is not a matter of making a good work or not, but about dealing with characters who can empathize with the pain of the times.

- You’re known as a director who writes scripts so quickly. Is it possible because you've planned a lot in advance? 

= Yes, I think so. The condition needs to fit to write a script quickly. But sometimes I have to write a script even if the conditions for the story have not been developed. In that case, it's hard to write a script. There's a reason why you can't write a script quickly if you can't write it quickly. A script is about sending people here over there. It is the work of moving the physical and psychological movements of characters. If the conditions for such movements fit, I can write a script quickly. Since I pursue characters moving fast, I have no choice but to write the script quickly. When the conditions don’t fit, I can’t decide to send a character to the sea or into space. That’s why I summarize various conditions for characters to move.

- Is it possible because you have been doing creative work since little?

= While delivering a lecture, I often say that writing training in their teens is critical. Many people think writing is an easy job. Since everybody can read and write, they don’t think writing requires training. However, I think writing training is important as practicing the violin or the piano in their teens. It is also important to have a basic amount. It is nonsense to say someone is talented or not after writing one or two scripts because that’s not enough to measure or decide something. You can decide after writing 50 scripts at least. If 50 scripts are too many, you should try out at least 10 to 20 scripts. 

- Along with One Win, we can watch COBWEB, which you’re in charge of the screenplay, at the same time, right? 

= Since we finished shooting COBWEB just now, it will take time to be released, but the process for One Win has been finished 99%.