’By Another Name’ review: A dying filmmaker attempts a final project in South Korean drama

Dir/scr: Lee Jea-han. South Korea. 2025. 95mins

What do you do if you’re diagnosed with terminal cancer and have roughly a month to live? If you are filmmaker Je-hyun (Moon In-hwan), you decide to make one last film and go out with an artistic bang. That is the jumping-off point for writer-director Lee Jea-han’s third feature By Another Name, a multi-layered meta-drama making its bow in Busan Competition.

A muddled script and sluggish pacing

Lee is a former apprentice of and assistant director for Hong Sang-soo (on Nobody’s Daughter Haewon and Our Sunhi) and has followed in Hong’s footsteps by quickly establishing a thematic identity for himself in his work. In his previous films Sophie’s World (2021) and The Face of Hwanhee (2024), Lee explored concepts of constructed realities and the world as a fiction. Now these themes are at the heart of By Another Name, which may find life on the festival circuit in the short term but, with a muddled script and sluggish pacing, is unlikely to gain much further traction.

Films about filmmaking have a long history, taking in the likes of the classical Singin’ In The Rain, the avant-garde 8½ and the gonzo One Cut Of The Dead, and the thing they tend to have in common is an obsessive filmmaker at the centre of the action. That holds true for By Another Name, although Lee’s shattered script neuters any point about resignation, regret and legacy he may have been aiming for.

Diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, 30-something film director Je-hyun has made peace with his fate. What he has not reconciled is his desire to make one last film. To that end – and contrary to the wishes of his wife Su-jin (Jung Hoe-ryn, The Land Of Morning Calm) that he take it easy, eat right and at least try to extend his life – he secretly meets up with his friend and producer Ji-young (Hwang Mi-young, Netflix’s Chicken Nugget) to get the ball rolling on production of a script he has just finished. After finding actors to play the roles of Je-hyun and his wife, the group get started with table reads in Je-hyun’s comfortable home. But when Su-jin gets home from work early one day and discovers them, they get into an argument – Je-hyun has a fit, coughs up the cancerous tumour and is miraculously healed.

However, it is soon revealed that this all transpired in Su-jin’s imagination; it is her impression of what her husband’s final script would look like as she reads it for the first time three years after his death. On the spot, she decides she is going to see her husband’s final wish realized and make the movie. Once again, Ji-young is roped into producing, this time with troubled actor Jong-hoon (also Moon) playing Je-hyun – unsurprising considering he’s a dead ringer for the man. Needless to say, the process compels Su-jin to make some uncomfortable admissions about her ideas of grieving, and when enough is enough.

Despite being shot in icy blues and practically free of a single close-up in order to keep us at a distance, By Another Name muddies the waters by never settling on who the fixated filmmaker is. Could it be both Je-hyun and Su-jin? Similarly, Jong-hoon’s series resemblance is commented on but never really impacts Su-jin, and the literal lingering spectre of Je-hyun only raises yet more questions about what the film is about. Throughout, Lee has a firm handle on how to visualise the material – it just seems as if he hasn’t figured out exactly what material that is.