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In A Fresh Start, main character Ji-hyun (played by WOO Ji-hyun) studies Korean literature and Korean Language in a small university located in a rural area, but some departments are about to be merged. Students are wandering and drinking everyday on the edge of life. One day, Ji-hyun has sex with Hye-rin (played by LEE Hye-rin) who has a strong personality, and she becomes pregnant. These two hit the road together in order to have an abortion.

 
A Fresh Start is a story about today’s shrinking youth. Tuitions and enormous changes put them through trials and they are becoming smaller in the face of people and love. The film stares at youths living under Neo-liberalism, and is also a fresh start for director JANG Woo-jin, winner of the Korean Competition’s Grand Prize at the 15th Jeonju International Film Festival. He got off to a roaring start with his feature debut A Fresh Start at the age of 29. He was born in 1985 and studied Film, Video and Moving Image in Hongik University. He began his film career aiming to be an art director, but soon found that his most fitting job was as a director after working in all kinds of roles on film shoots. So he finally made the short film A Day (2011) as a graduation work.

 
”A Day (2011) is the basis of A Fresh Start. It is about a man and a woman’s awkward relationship, focusing on their helplessness and depression over the course of a day. I extended the story of A Day and that became A Fresh Start.“ A Fresh Start became more realistic when director JANG met the screenwriter KIM Da-hyun, and they modified the scenario together. ”I felt sorry that I couldn’t paint youngsters’ unstable feelings in A Day, including their social problems, conflicts between dreams and reality, and the picture of a Korean society unlikely to change. Meanwhile I met screenwriter KIM, and heard that some departments of her university were merged, just like in the film. I found many people have experienced these situations.“ JANG worked with KIM to modify his first draft every week. ”However I didn’t want to make the film as a reportage. So I decided to concentrate on characters living with those social problems, not social issues. It was my goal to decide what to show or not, and separate what was inside and outside of the frame.“

 

Director JANG was thinking of a new system while he started his project with only a KRW 45 million (USD 44,000) budget and six staff members. ”I was a fan of Stanley Kubrick because he considers scenes minutely. But when I worked on site, that didn’t work for me. I was so confused that I started to study HONG Sangsoo, the Dardenne brothers, Robert Bresson and documentaries.“ In order to feel natural, he proceeded to cast college theater group students. That was to reflect the characters of A Fresh Start, as these actors find themselves in similar circumstances. ”These actors cannot be expected to play as well as in a feature film. But they acted like real people around us. My methodology is to downsize staff as much as possible. I tried to remove all controls for filming, so I shot most scenes in actual spaces, including convenience stores and sports locations. I made a rule to re-shoot without much preparation and then revise.“ JANG tried to choose experimental methods to create his own system. ”I am glad for the opportunity to make films on such a small budget these days. But I’d like to work with more next time. My goal is to make films in my own way. I want to produce films which can tell many things through personal and private stories, and individuals living in the flow of time.“

 

By SONG Soon-jin