In world built entirely from imagination, ten teenagers perform tabletop role-playing game scenarios, traveling between Lisan City, Alstroemeria Forest, and Ashua Island. Director Jung Jaehoon intersects online and outdoor gameplay scenes with imaginative staging, breaking boundaries between reality and fantasy, particInternationalants and players. They search for faint light in darkness while collectively constructing stories and creating identities. This hybrid work crossing documentary and fiction prompts reflection on boundaries between imagined worlds and life, c Asian Premiereturing autonomous imagination and communal sensibility.​

* Each Critics’ Choice screening will be followed by a Critics’ Talk—a one-on-one conversation between the director and a critic. 

* Note: This talk will be conducted in Korean without interpretation.​ 

Esper's Light plunges into the world of “original character communities,” a subculture where teenagers engage in collaborative, text-based role-playing games (TRPGs) on Twitter. The director and crew participate as OA (Operator Accounts), guiding the story within a loosely sketched, minimal-rule universe: an apocalyptic world where teens with supernatural powers have been exploited by Lisan City. 

The film alternates between intimate close-ups of players’ faces as they type responses on their phones, and cinematic reimaginings of the game world in the style of science fiction, kaiju films, and crime thrillers. As they navigate a range of choices, the players begin to pursue a faint light—friendship and reconciliation—risking their own characters’ disappearance to choose a state of wholeness where nature, humans, and androids can all be freed. Within this minimal-rule framework, they arrive—without any explicit agreement—at a shared sensibility, a “world-sense,” rooted in the ideal of “becoming whole together.” On the island of Ashua, this shared sensibility forges unexpected connections, binding scattered individuals into a true community.

Where do we find the inner lives and narratives of today's youth?

• Producer고유희 KO Yoohee
• Screenplay 나타샤 모데스토바 MODESTOVA Natasha, 심다하 SIM Daha, 양규리 YANG Gyuri, 양효리 YANG Hyori, 이새나 LEE Saena, 최연진 CHOI Yeonjin, 한서화 외. HAN Seohwa et al.
• Cinematography 박수환 PARK Swan
• Edit 정재훈 JUNG Jae-hoon
• Production Design 이병재 LEE Byoungjae, 이윤호 (신도시) LEE Yunho (Seendosi)
• Sound 배수찬 BAE Soochan
• Music 고우 Goh-woo, 최태현 CHOI Taehyun
• Cast 나타샤 모데스토바 MODESTOVA Natasha, 심다하 SIM Daha, 양규리 YANG Gyuri, 양효리 YANG Hyori, 이새나 LEE Saena, 최연진 CHOI Yeonjin, 한서화 외. HAN Seohwa et al.