Stars and Sand 별과 모래
KAM Jeongwon 감정원
2025 • Fiction • 108 min
Thursday, October 15, 2026 at 7:00 PM
Korean Cultural Center New York
(122 E 32nd Street, New York, NY 10016)
* Intro and Q&A with KAM JEONGWON and CHOI CHANG HWAN
* Opening Film / Seoul Independent Film Festival(SIFF) Choice
Synopsis: In late summer, Se-yeon, unable to adapt to the rapidly moving city, lives at a slower pace, keeping her dreams close but never quite reaching for them. The only time she feels truly alive is at night, when she goes to the river after sunset to paint in the darkness. At the same time, there is someone else by the river. Jae-woo has a dream of his own: to make a fortune selling river sand. They share the river at night, face each other over meals, and walk together through the changing season. As summer comes to an end, Se-yeon and Jae-woo are forced to face each other’s vulnerabilities.
Director’s Note: Over the past three years, I have spent time walking along and across the Geumho River, which runs through Daegu, and came to understand that a river is a river because it must flow. Like the stars and sand that remain within the flowing river, Se-yeon and Jae-woo are also beings who stay in one place while constantly moving through time. The stars reflected on the river’s sandbars help us find our way toward loving one another.
Stars and Sand grew out of a collaborative process with local artists I met through Palhyun Art Activism (팔현습지를 지키는 예술행동), an artistic collective working to protect Palhyeon Wetland. Artists from different disciplines came together with a shared feeling: there is a place we want to protect. It was within this shared time and place that the film took shape. Painter Ahn Su-hyun made her first appearance in film as Se-yeon. All of the paintings that appear in the film are her own works. The river and the people, the paintings and the stories in the film are also a record of a particular time, created through different artistic practices coming together in one place.
Stars and Sand is an attempt to record the river and the people who are here now, as we embrace the winter together and wait for the spring that will come again.
51st Seoul Independent Film Festival - Grand Prize
27th Jeonju International Film Festival — Regional Film Showcase
14th Muju Film Festival — Chang: Korean Feature Competition
13th Chuncheon Film Festival — Indie Cinema
◆ KAM JEONGWON is a filmmaker whose work explores the point where personal emotions meet time, place, and social context. KAM directed the feature film The Train Passed By (2021) and later founded the cooperative Continuity, through which they have continued to produce and independently distribute films. KAM’s latest feature, Stars and Sand (2025), is a fiction film set around the Geumho River and Palhyeon Wetland, capturing the passage of time shared by the river and the people who live alongside it.
In Collaboration with Seoul Independent Film Festival(SIFF)
