The future of hybrid cinema: deconstructing the boundaries between fiction film and non-fiction film through Hong Sang-soo’s filmography

This study explores the aesthetic achievements and future potential of the ‘hybrid cinema’ established in director Hong Sang-soo’s later works. Focusing on his experimental camera techniques, this paper discusses the blurring of boundaries between fiction and non-fiction film, while concurrently analyzing the interplay between Hong’s autobiographical elements as a filmmaker, the meta-structures of his narratives, and his existential challenge to the question of ‘What is cinema?’ Drawing on Laura Marks’s [2000. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Duke University Press] framework of ‘in-betweenness’ it examines the realism achieved through improvised dialogues, photographed dining scenes, and the contingent exposure of everyday space, integrating fiction, non-fiction, and experimental moments within Hong’s fictional frameworks. By recontextualizing Hong’s methodology, the practice-based project transposes autobiographical fiction film structures onto essayistic non-fiction film, thereby expanding the boundaries of hybrid filmmaking. This study proposes ‘fictionalized non-fiction’ as a new paradigm for future cinema, demonstrating how unscripted dialogue paired with rigid camera compositions can generate fictional immersion by prompting a cognitive illusion that an invisible script is covertly operating beneath raw reality. Ultimately, this study identifies the precise aesthetic devices through which cinema acquires ‘hybridity,’ while redefining the ontological relationship between the screen and reality.