Film

When his architecture expert father falls into a coma during a visit to Columbus, Indiana—a small Midwest city renowned for modernist wonders designed by the likes of Eero Saarinen and I. M. Pei—expat Jin (Cho) flies in from Korea to be with him. He forms an unlikely friendship with Casey (Richardson), a bright young local who’s dealing with another kind of sick parent, and the two find themselves opening up to one another in surprising ways. Making brilliant use of the emotional possibilities of architectural space, this formally exquisite debut by director-to-watch Kogonada is a mesmerizing work that’s at once intellectually rigorous and warmly human.