After charming audiences with the delightful Our Sunhi (MIFF 2014), the prolific Hong Sang-soo offers up another missive of love, fate and free-flowing soju.

Still pining over Kwon (Seo Young-hwa), whom he met during a previous trip to Seoul, Mori (Kase Ryo) returns from Tokyo hoping to reconnect. Unable to find her and speaking only broken English with most people he meets, he writes her letters about his trip – biding his time in a guesthouse and nearby café (run by Moon So-ri's Youngsun), drinking and becoming intertwined in the lives of kindly locals.

In his 16th feature – and his 15th film to screen at MIFF since 1997 – Hong is once more fascinated by his favoured motifs of coincidence, miscommunication and the vagaries of memory. His intricately constructed, leisurely paced comedy plays with time and storytelling techniques in the filmmaker's shortest, sweetest yet smartest feature to date.

"A pocket portrait of romantic yearning and cross-cultural connections and misconceptions." – Reverse Shot