SAGAL: Snake and Scorpion

In 2020, filmmaker Lee Dongwoo found out that his classmate from film school whom he had not seen for six years had been borrowing money using his name. Reaching out to Geonho, Lee learns that his friend has become a loan shark himself, is addicted to gambling, loves to consume lavish meals and occasionally steals money from his employers.

Self-aware and often self-deprecating, Geonho has a genial personality that belies his precarity and pathological obsessions so much that he feels more like a fictional hero of a tragicomedy. Through Geonho’s murky errands and dealings, filmed with a handheld camera from up close, SAGAL: Snake and Scorpion uncovers another section of South Korean society surviving outside the legal economic system.

As the film explores the notion of debt and the circle of poverty, addiction and cover-up excuses, Lee ponders the question of what he as a documentary filmmaker owes his subjects. He draws parallels between Geonho and the lead protagonist of his previous film, Self-portrait 2020 (2020), a homeless man, once a film director with a film presented at the Venice Film Festival. Lee’s transparent, thought-provoking film dramatises the internecine collaboration between two very different personalities.

– Srikanth Srinivasan