Movies aren't always about beautiful dreams. Sometimes, they're nightmares, nightmares that is beautifully crafted within a blur line of art and life.
To Jihoon, cinema was never just a medium for escape; it was a form of controlled illusion, a craft capable of making lies feel like truth and reality look like art.
Using film to pull off the world's most exquisite fraud that, to him, was the true definition of filmmaking.
The Grand Theatre Lumiere in Cannes shimmered under the flood of golden lights.
Previous cameras flashes, the sound of applause echoed like waves against marble, and the world's most respected filmmakers, producers, and critics filled the velvet seats.
Yet amid the glamour, Jihoon stood quietly near the side of the stage, adjusting his suit cuffs, his expression calm but unreadable.
Ten minutes into the premiere ceremony, he made his move.
"Movies," he began softly, his vocie just brushing against his words, "are just lies that tell the truth."
It was a famous quote by the French New Wave pioneer Jean Luc Godard.
Instantly, a ripple of murmurs ran through the audience. Everyone knew Godard—of course they did.
This was Cannes, in France, where Godard's spirit lingered in every frame projected here and there.
But the way Jihoon delivered it—without pomp, without translation, simply letting the sentence breathe into the hall—caught people's attention.
He smiled faintly and closed with a quiet remark that hinted at what was to come. "Let's see," he said, "how far a lie can take us tonight."
The lights dimmed. The screen came alive—or rather, it didn't.
The film began with absolute blackness.
No image. No light. No color. Just darkness swallowing everything.
At first, no one moved. The audience waited, expecting a fade-in, a logo, a shot, something.
But seconds stretched on even longer.
"Is there a problem with the screening copy?" whispered someone from the back.
"This is odd. A blunder at a Cannes premiere?" another muttered with a smirk.
"Wait," someone near the front leaned forward. "Listen. There's something there."
Sure enough, a sound began to creep through the speakers—a shallow, rapid breathing, followed by a faint scratching. It was the sound of someone trapped.
The pitch of the breathing rose, uneven, panicked.
The scraping echoed like fingernails against wood.
The darkness in the theater seemed to grow heavier.
The air thickened with unease.
Every person in that grand hall suddenly felt as if they were the ones trapped in that unseen space.
The sensory deprivation worked its spell—the human mind naturally fights darkness, reaching for meaning in the void, building images from fear.
Sean Penn, Quentin Tarantino, and other renowned directors sitting in the front row exchanged brief glances but said nothing.
Their eyes stayed locked on the empty screen.
A few people shifted in their seats. Some clenched their fists unconsciously.
Others held their breath.
Then—"Click."
A lighter flicked open.
A small flame appeared, faint but defiant, illuminating half a man's face.
His eyes were wide, his skin slick with sweat.
He was lying in what looked like a wooden box, the flame trembling as he gasped for air.
The audience collectively exhaled. The minute-long blackness finally ended.
Relief, curiosity, and terror blended in the air.
From that single flicker of light, the entire premise of the film became clear: a man buried alive, desperate for escape.
The title—'Buried'—suddenly made perfect sense.
But what astonished everyone wasn't the story itself. It was that opening minute.
"That technique…" whispered a critic from Variety.
"Brilliant," murmured another.
A single term surfaced in everyone's mind: sensory deprivation.
By stripping away the audience's sight, Jihoon had forced them to share the protagonist's panic—the primal fear of darkness, confinement, and death.
When the light finally appeared, it wasn't just light; it was salvation.
A minute of nothing had turned a simple flicker of flame into something divine.
Sean Penn's jaw tightened as he leaned forward, muttering, "Incredible…"
He'd been watching Jihoon since the young director quoted Godard before the screening.
At first, Sean had thought it was a bold gesture—charming, maybe pretentious.
He'd even planned to give the kid a few pointers after the premiere, offer some veteran wisdom.
But now, seeing this? He realized Jihoon didn't need anyone's pointers.
"This isn't imitation," Sean whispered to himself. "It's evolution."
What Jihoon had done was take Godard's philosophy—"Cinema is truth twenty-four times a second"—and flip it on its head.
He used deception, silence, absence to craft emotion.
He turned nothingness into narrative.
To achieve that level of precision in storytelling—to make a black screen feel alive—was something few could do, even after decades in the business.
"I've got to say," Sean finally said aloud, turning to the man beside him, "this young director's use of sound and darkness is textbook perfect. He manipulates the audience's emotions with such precision, even I couldn't escape it."
The man next to him was Jim who is grinned proudly after hearing the compliment.
After all, he had been the one who flew all the way from Los Angeles to Seoul just to sign Jihoon.
At that time, people had laughed at him for it.
A gamble, they'd said.
Who would risk their reputation on a teenage Korean director who hadn't even released a feature in the West?
Now, as the Cannes audience sat in stunned silence, Jim's grin widened.
Every praise that Sean Penn uttered was another silent medal pinned to his chest.
"See?" Jim whispered under his breath. "Told you he was the real deal."
Sean chuckled softly. "You might've found the next Michael Jordan. Or maybe something even rarer."
Coming from Sean Penn, that was no small compliment.
After all, this was a man who had conquered the unspoken "European Grand Slam" of acting—winning Best Actor at Cannes, Berlin, and the Venice Film Festival's prestigious Volpi Cup.
It was a record few could ever dream of matching. His name carried a weight that silenced any room he spoke in.
Though renowned primarily for his acting, Sean's reputation as a director was equally formidable. He wasn't just an actor who turned to directing—he was a craftsman who understood cinema as both an art and a battlefield.
So when he spoke, people listened. His praise wasn't given lightly, and tonight, it was given to Jihoon.
The film continued to play, its atmosphere thick with tension that seemed to seep through the air like smoke.
Inside that coffin, the sole actor of the film Ryan was struggling to light his surrounding, his trembling hand revealing fear, rage, despair—all confined to the claustrophobic space of a wooden box.
The audience, still haunted by that opening, felt each breath like a weight on their chest.
And Jihoon—sitting quietly in the back row—watched their reactions.
He didn't need to see the screen; he'd memorized every cut, every sound cue, every heartbeat.
What mattered to him now was them—the gasps, the shifting bodies, the whisper of clothing as people leaned forward unconsciously. That was his real canvas.
Cinema, to him, was not about what the camera captured—it was about what the audience felt.
Jim leaned toward Sean and said with quiet satisfaction, "Worth the ticket huh?"
Sean laughed under his breath. "Worth every dime."
Sean now understand why there is rumors about Jihoon's growing influence, his collobration contract with Fox, his private studio JH Pictures are steering up so much commotion in the industry.
Even now there is whispers about his deep ties with the Murdoch family, suggesting that his projects were now intertwined with some of the most powerful media dynasties in the world.
All was true, not because he can make money but he also can make excellent film.
Fox's quarterly report had already proven his worth. Every project Jihoon touched turned gold.
His last film had doubled its budget in streaming deals alone, and now, with 'Buried', he can already imagine it making waves at Cannes before the premiere ended.
But those who'd once dismissed Jim's decision to back him were now desperate to undo their mistake. Every major studio executive wanted a piece of him.
Too late.
Jihoon's contract with Fox was airtight—a "dead chain," as the gossip went. They said it bound him completely, ensuring his creative freedom while securing Fox's ownership of his distribution rights. A perfect deal on paper, but one that made Jihoon untouchable.
And that was exactly how Jihoon would liked it.
Because for him, success was never about money or fame. It was about creating something that would outlive the noise—something timeless.
Something that blurred the line between fear and beauty, between light and darkness, between truth and deceit.
So tonight, as the crowd slowly immersed themselves in the premiere, Jihoon was destined to write a new chapter in the history of cinema—a director bold enough to deceive his audience in pursuit of art.
Movies weren't always about dreams. Sometimes, they were about nightmares. And in that fragile space between the two—between art and fraud, between silence and sound—was where Jihoon found his truth.