Hill of Freedom is a modest and elegant character drama with one key innovation.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Jan 14, 2025

In today's cinema, no one makes films as formulaic and at the same time as unpredictable as Hong's; no other director expresses his radicality in such a discreet way.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 29, 2023

Without reaching the perfection of the beautiful Oki's Movie, Hong always delivers; 66 minutes of pleasure guaranteed. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 29, 2023

Hong is an expertly unsparing diagnostician of the anti-revels he can’t tear himself away from...

| Jan 24, 2023

Hong Sang-soo at his most playful and accessible...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 24, 2020

What Hill of Freedom ends up being is a mixed bag of well-developed techniques and good ideas undone by a thoroughly off-putting central character.

| Jul 22, 2020

Hong guides this small-scale wonder with a hint of mischief and a knack for deconstructing narratives and reconstructing them into something new and wonderful.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 23, 2020

A charming, lovely experience.

| Jun 23, 2020

As sweet and warm as anything Hong has yet made, but with a dark cloud of instability under its fragile reality.

| Jun 17, 2020

That may sound like some terribly serious arthouse navel-gazing, but ultimately Hill of Freedom is surprisingly satisfying in its sheer - albeit abjectly disjointed - fish-out-of-water ordinariness.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 12, 2020

The ingenuity of the movie's structure is stimulating and delightful...

| Jun 11, 2020

It's also consistently funny, the highlight being a subplot involving another house guest having an issue with her temper.

| Jun 15, 2019

Hill of Freedom doesn't rely on linguistic miscues for easy humour. Even in English, it's one of Hong's best films to date, and demonstrates that his jaundiced vision of Korean culture can transcend the specificities of language.

| Nov 21, 2017

Hong Sang-soo's Hill of Freedom is a melancholic delight.

| Aug 14, 2017

With modest means and a limited field of action, Hong achieves a complexity akin to the grand historical meditations of Alain Resnais; steering clear of explicit politics, he conjures revealing attitudes through reverberant-and often comical-details.

| Oct 6, 2014

A light-hearted and slightly humorous story of a young man experiencing a vexing and bewildering transition in his life.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 1, 2014

Final resolution and wrap-up are hurried, facile and non-cinematic, in today's common cop-out of a few seconds' offscreen voice telling viewers the future.

| Sep 26, 2014

It isn't without its pleasures and occasional insights, but ultimately little more than an excuse for Hong to try out a new stylistic color in his auteurist palette.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 21, 2014

The prolific South Korean writer-director's funniest work ...

| Original Score: A- | Sep 11, 2014

The mismatched narrative suggests two possible endings for the film, and where Hong's characters usually lose out in playing the field, for once both conclusions seem equally affirming.

| Sep 7, 2014