COLUMBUS - KOGONADA

Columbus in the state of Indiana is a city of not even 50,000 inhabitants that has coincidentally become a paradise of modernistic architecture. These buildings play an essential role – both narrative and visual – in ‘Columbus’, Kogonada’s debut, whose pseudonym refers to Yasujiro Ozu’s regular screenwriter Kogo Noda. A South Korean (John Cho, from the recent Star Trek reboot) travels to Columbus because his father, an architecture lecturer, is in a coma there. He makes friends with a young librarian who is taking care of her mother, a former drug addict. An unusual friendship develops, spiced up with architecture (history). With ‘Columbus’ Kogonada has made the perfect cocktail of Antonioni, Ozu, Asiatic minimalism and American indie film à la Richard Linklater. One of the most acclaimed American productions of 2017. (Film Fest Gent, C.V.)