Film archive, 2026

The World Before

첫 세계

Director YOON Dan-bi

1Festival entries

★Avg. rating

Jin (Sim Su-bin) is a seventeen-year-old girl born and raised on a small island. Still carrying the light, translucent grace unique to childhood, she spends her summer amid the village’s quiet everyday life. Then one day, she is reunited with her childhood friend Dujae (Kim Eo-jin), who has returned to the island for his grandmother’s funeral. Arriving alone, Dujae remains silent about what he has gone through, and Jin becomes a delicate pillar of support for the utterly stranded, adrift boy. As an unspoken, subtle tension grows between them, the girl’s quiet world begins to secretly crack. The World Before is a film where a tingling sensation of suspense and fluttering excitement lingers in every trivial gesture: the slight lifting of a hemline, hesitant fidgeting, and watchful glances exchanged between a boy and a girl. It is an astonishing work in which no divide can be felt between eroticism and innocence, desire, compassion, and understanding. Watching the dizzying, faint time shared by the two friends stirs the viewer’s heart, and the moment the girl and boy awaken from that dreamlike first world as if shattered to pieces, the viewer’s heart collapses alongside them. As the latest work from director Yoon Dan-bi, who drew immense acclaim with Moving On, it is a singularly beautiful, sensual, and aching film.

Stills4

Film details

Director: YOON Dan-bi
Country/Region: Korea
Year: 2026
Length: 115min
Original language: Korean
Elsewhere: Letterboxd IMDb Wikidata TMDB Douban

Director

YOON Dan-bi

Yoon Dan-bi′s feature debut, Moving on (2019), won four awards, including the NETPAC Award, at the Busan International Film Festival, and received the Bright Future Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Her second feature, The World Before, was screened in the Platform section at the Toronto International Film Festival.

From Busan International Film Festival 2026, No. 31

Credits

Director: YOON Dan-bi
Executive producer: Suzuko HATANAKA, Young-shin SONG
Producer: YOON Dan-bi
Cast: Su-bin SIM, Eo-jin KIM
Screenplay: YOON Dan-bi
Cinematography: Seong-eun LEE
Production design: Young-tak KIM
Editing: Chang-jae WON
Music: Min-hwi LEE
Sound: Won KIM
Production company: Cheonggwa, Humanité Co.¸ Ltd.

Festival appearances1

Choose a festival entry to see its screenings, articles and audience reviews.

The World BeforeBusan International Film Festival 2026, No. 31Korean Cinema Today: Panorama

Festival history1

釜山国际电影节, 2026Korean Cinema Today: Panorama, Official selection

Film posters

Poster language