International Premiere
Cho Hyun-suh’s film is attuned to the poetry in silences, the tension in talk, and the paradox when dedication to one person often means neglect, or even betrayal, of another. Da-bin (Sung Yu-been) is quite burdened for an adolescent: his mother is broke, he’s got a runaway brother, and his little sister is going deaf. Trudging through each day with academic, romantic, social, and economic pressure weighing him down, he nonetheless finds moments of happiness with his best friend Jung-won (Lim Jae-Hyeok) and girlfriend Jae-un (Kang Min-ju).
Cho gets strong performances from Sung, Cha Jun-hui as his adorable younger sibling, and Lee Seung-yeon as his mother. As Da-bin’s thuggish pal Jung-won, Lim radiates menace and pathos in equal measure, and Kang is restrained and graceful as the girl our hero may not be able to hold on to. Cho’s visual style is clean and concise, while still conveying the feel of winter in all its blankness and severity.
Oct 5 & 7: Q&A
Cooperating Organizations
![]()
Media Partner
Community Partner
Sung Yu-been, Cha Jun-hui, Lee Seung-yeon
South Korea
2025
In Korean with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Credits & Director
Producer
Jeong Young-joon
Screenwriter
Cho Hyun-suh
Cinematography
Jung Woon-chun
Editor
Han Ji-yoon
Production Design
Suh Joo-yeon
Original Music
Lee Soo-yeon
Cho Hyun-suh
Born in 1995, director Cho Hyun-suh studied directing at the Korean Academy of Film Arts and has directed short films including Tree (2020) and Nobody’s Land (2021). Winter Light is his debut feature film.
Filmography: Tree (2020); Nobody’s Land (2021)
Missing VIFF? Check Out What's Playing at the VIFF Centre
Day of Wrath
Anna, the young second wife of a well-respected but much older pastor, falls in love with her stepson when he returns to their small seventeenth-century village. Stepping outside the bounds of the village's harsh moral code has disastrous results.
House of Hope
"House of Hope" is the name of a Waldorf elementary school near Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, founded by Manar and her husband Milad. This documentary follows their efforts to go about their lives before, during, and after the events of October 7.
NAZA
NAZA is a codeword euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike. This chilling documentary exposes the policy and process of state-sanctioned mass killings.
You Had to Be There
In a strange quirk of fate, the legendary Toronto '72 production of the musical comedy Jesus hit Godspell launched a constellation of comedy stars, all unknown at the time but now known to us as Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Victor Garber, et al
Atonement
A former Marine suffering from PTSD seeks a meeting with the Iraqi family to which he did great wrong ten years earlier in the Gulf War. Atonement navigates challenging, politically-charged psychological territory with diligence and sensitivity.
The Sandbox
Borders are the faultlines of the world. Kenya-Jade Pinto's doc examines how modern surveillance technology, bio-metrics and AI are combining to make land and sea borders as impenetrable as air travel, and suggests the unspoken cost is our own humanity.


