Oscar-nominated Canadian filmmaker Celine Song sounds off about love in her new rom-com, ‘Materialists': ‘We're trying to control this thing that's uncontrollable'
'Love is a miracle,' says Celine Song. 'It's this one thing where you're always being asked to jump off a cliff. You have to believe every day that it's going to happen.'
This earnest, hopeful sensibility has carried across the films of the Canadian writer-director, who announced herself as a major voice with her Oscar-nominated debut feature 'Past Lives' (2023). Drawn from Song's own experience of immigrating from South Korea as a child, the sweeping yet intimate drama follows Nora (Greta Lee), an aspiring playwright who reconnects with a childhood crush from Seoul as she pursues her creative ambitions in New York. Though she ultimately marries the novelist she met at a fateful writing retreat, Nora contemplates the significance of both relationships when her former classmate comes to visit.
Winnie Wang is a writer and film programmer whose work has been featured in Cinema Scope, Documentary magazine and Little White Lies.
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