Korean-Canadian-American filmmaker Celine Song is a respected playwright and exciting new voice in directing and screenwriting.
Loosely based on and inspired by Song’s own life experience, her debut film Past Lives follows Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), two deeply connected childhood friends, who are separated after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, they are reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life.
An auteur-driven film from one of the most exciting new voices to come out of Sundance, Past Lives has since traversed the festival circuit in San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, where it won the Audience Award, and Berlin, where it was nominated for the Berlinale Golden Bear. The film went on to achieve remarkable success at the US box office.
Also an established playwright, Song is best known for Endlings, which premiered in 2019 at American Repertory Theater and had its New York debut in 2020 at New York Theatre Workshop. She has been a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and a semifinalist for the American Playwriting Foundation’s Relentless Award. During the New York Theatre Company’s virtual 2020 season, she presented live on Twitch The Seagull on the Sims 4. Song also wrote on the first season of the Amazon series Wheel of Time.
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