Six months after the premiere of Grass at the Berlinale, prolific auteur Hong Sangsoo is back with another black and white drama which once again reunites him with his leading actress Kim Min-hee. Having just debuted at the Locarno International Film Festival, where it picked up the Best Actor Award for lead Ki Joo-bong, Hotel by the River employs less narrative trickery than most of the director's films and builds from a series of slight vignettes into a moving story of an ageing poet trying to take stock of his life in what may be his waning days.
