What would it feel like to meet, on a real street, an actor you just saw in a movie?  In Part 1 of the film-within-the-film Theatre Story (<극장전>), we meet Sang-won, a 19-year-old high school student who is neither quite a boy nor an adult. After seeing a play for the first time in his life, he happens to run into his first love, Young-sil. In Part 2, set in the reality outside the film Theatre Story, Dong-soo, a man in his thirties who has long been preparing for his directorial debut, watches a short film titled Theatre Story, directed by a senior colleague who is seriously ill. After the screening, he meets Choi Young-sil, the actress who played Young-sil in the film, in front of the theater. Dong-soo asks this actress he has just met for her contact information and persistently confesses his love to her.

Theatre Story—a “story about the theater” (劇場傳) and also a “story that unfolds in front of the theater” (劇場前). Like its double meaning, the film adopts a unique structure composed of two independent narratives: the film Theatre Story featuring Sang-won and Young-sil, and Dong-soo’s story, as he believes that the film was based on his own experiences. Within this structure, the film explores the boundary between two fictions, as well as the boundary between fiction and reality.  A film filled with a captivating rhythm created by cinema and reality, difference and repetition.