The Power of Kangwon Province traces, one after the other, the trajectories of a man and a woman traveling separately through the mountainous eastern province of South Korea known as Kangwon. Both have left Seoul for the weekend to get some perspective on their lives and to assuage a common sense of loss and loneliness. As they wander, the pair just misses crossing paths with each other. Their separate encounters, however, reveal to the spectator links between the two drifting characters. This resonant work firmly announces Hong’s fascination with chance, the tenuousness of connection and the ability of narrative cinema to orchestrate the two. – DP