With a weary heart, PARK Yong-woo decides to embark on a journey to "the forest." Located on Yakushima Island in southern Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan, the UNESCO World Heritage site is home to the renowned forest that is said to have inspired the MIYAZAKI Hayao animated film Princess Mononoke (1997). For his ten-day journey, PARK finds the young and beautiful TAGAKI Rina to keep him company. As the two wanderers trade stories, they decide to search for the reported...more

With a weary heart, PARK Yong-woo decides to embark on a journey to "the forest." Located on Yakushima Island in southern Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan, the UNESCO World Heritage site is home to the renowned forest that is said to have inspired the MIYAZAKI Hayao animated film Princess Mononoke (1997). For his ten-day journey, PARK finds the young and beautiful TAGAKI Rina to keep him company. As the two wanderers trade stories, they decide to search for the reportedly 7200-year-old Jōmon Sugi, a cryptomeria tree, and with each step they become more curious about the existence of this aged and cryptic form of life.

For more than a decade, SONG Il-gon has been exploring the boundaries between documentary and narrative filmmaking, blurring them along the way. His films -- including <Flower Island> (2001), <Spider Forest> (2004), and <The Magicians> (2005) -- have shown at such renowned film festivals as Venice, Rotterdam, and Tokyo FilmEx. His most recent feature, <Always>, was the 2011 Busan International Film Festival’s opening film and later took in over 1 million admissions at the box office.less