Official selectionJeong-in AwardCitizen Critics' Award
Travel/Road MovieWomenEnvironment/Nature
Quitting her job and being pregnant - that’s the sum of what we know about Eunju (Kim Seul-ki). Seemingly without much desire or expectation, Eunju heads to the countryside at the suggestion of Changho (Woo Ji-hyeon), who proposes a month of seasonal farm work. She tidies up rice straw left over from threshing, tends to cattle, sits down to eat with rough-hewn men of the countryside, and exchanges brief, trivial, awkward conversations. There is little in the way of incident in BALER. If anything does happen, it simply arises as part of the natural order of things: the birth of a calf, the appearance of a dog and a cat, dawn mist, the evening glow, fathomless night, deep blue darkness, the rice paddies and fields of everyday labor. Amid the traces of life and death and the steady passage of time, only the weary bodies of rural laborers remain. Between Eunju and Changho drifts a faint, precarious landscape of feeling that resists any clean explanation. In the quiet frames, the steady labor of human beings - its lonely gestures, its hours of solitude - seems to permeate the very air. All the while, nature remains indifferent, its beauty almost cruel.
Oh Sehyeon was born in 1980. He has produced experimental films such as the short film To Suicide is To Live (2006). His first feature film, Flash (2020), was invited to the Jeonju International Film Festival, and his second feature film, USU (2021), was invited to the Busan International Film Festival. BALER is his third feature-length directorial work.
From Busan International Film Festival 2026, No. 31
