Eunwoo (Sim Eunwoo), Seungwoo (Kang Seungwoo), and Yunyoung (Jo Yunyoung) met at a support group for survivors of suicide loss. Having each experienced the loss of someone close to them, they often spend time together. They visit the Hantan River together, where Seungwoo’s late father’s ashes were scattered, and help Yunyoung move into her first place of her own. It was those they lost who brought the three of them together. Director Shin Dongmin has long drawn on his intimate, autobiographical experiences of death as both a source of creation and a set of unanswered questions, making films that summon the departed back to life. Not for You shifts the focus slightly, lingering not on the ‘you’ who is no longer here, but on the time lived by those who remain here after letting ‘you’ go. The film respectfully makes space for their innermost voices to be fully heard. A confession that begins with the ‘I’ of the here and now, reaching toward the eternal mystery that is ‘you.’ Like one long, long letter whose sender and recipient are one and the same.
Shin Dongmin graduated from the Department of Film Arts at Dong-ah Institute of Media and Arts and the Department of Film and Video at Yongin University. Both of his feature films, Mom′s Song (2020) and From You (2023), won the Grand Prize in the Korean Competition section at the Jeonju International Film Festival. He has also made short films such as Son′s Letter (2020) and Dogs in the Sun (2025). He has been running a support group for suicide bereavement for three years.
From Busan International Film Festival 2026, No. 31
