[At BIFF] ‘Dora’ brings Kim Do-yeon to tears during news conference; Jung Ju-ri’s 20-year project

On the boundary between ‘fiction’ and ‘truth,’ Kim Do-yeon confronts her character’s profound solitude

Kim Do-yeon, the lead actor in ‘Dora,’ invited to the Gala Presentation section of the 31st Busan International Film Festival, broke down in tears as she confronted the character’s deep inner solitude. At a news conference held Oct. 9 at the Busan Cinema Center in Haeundae-gu, Busan, Kim Do-yeon said she was “so deeply affected it left me reeling” after hearing director Jung Ju-ri say that Dora “continues to tell only the truth.” She was unable to continue speaking for a while.

Recalling her first audition, Kim Do-yeon said, “After reading an excerpt from the script, I asked the director, ‘Is Dora lying right now?’ I questioned the character’s truth myself, even as the actor playing her.” She added, “The moment I realized how lonely and tormented she must have been from Dora’s perspective, an immense sadness washed over me.” She said it required “a fierce process of completely dismantling my own way of thinking” to understand Dora’s whole emotional world rather than view her from a third party’s perspective.

An ensemble forged over 12 years, with Song Sae-byeok affirming the director’s command

Kim Do-yeon also spoke firmly about the film’s highly intimate physical-contact scenes. “Although it was a type of filming I had never experienced before, I accepted it without much hesitation from the moment I read the script because it naturally fit into the characters’ stories,” she said. “It was a decisive and important scene in which Dora and Nami reveal their deep wounds and pain to each other for the first time. I stayed in constant communication with the director to capture its essential meaning.”

Song Sae-byeok, reuniting with director Jung Ju-ri 12 years after the 2014 film ‘A Girl at My Door,’ plays Yeon-su in the new film, adding to its emotional weight. “Looking at old stills the director sent me the day before, I felt the passage of time,” Song Sae-byeok said. He praised the production, saying, “It was a set I returned to after a long time, but the director’s delicate insistence on probing deeply into the characters and her distinctive, richly layered worldview still carried tremendous weight.” He added that her direction was “exceptional in opening up unlimited possibilities for actors while providing clear guidance at decisive moments,” and expressed confidence that “because everyone on the set worked while immersed in the script’s deep emotions, a special energy will reach audiences as well.”

A 20-year obsession overturns the gaze: Jung Ju-ri reinterprets Freud

‘Dora,’ which was invited to this year’s Cannes Critics’ Week before winning a spot at the Busan International Film Festival, is an ambitious project director Jung Ju-ri carried with her for roughly 20 years, since her early 20s. Inspired by psychoanalyst Freud’s “Dora case,” the film meticulously portrays Dora, a wounded girl who recovers herself as an independent subject amid her tangled relationships with the adults around her.

Jung Ju-ri recalled, “When I was around 20, I read Freud’s complete works and became intensely interested in his case study of Dora’s hysteria. I dreamed of developing it into a feature screenplay.” She continued, “When I revisited and analyzed those records years later, I realized that every account depicted Dora as completely trapped within the ‘analyst’s — a man’s — gaze.’” She stressed that the fundamental questions of whether Dora’s real voice existed within that account and what she truly wanted became “the catalyst for creating the film.”

Ultimately, ‘Dora’ boldly overturns Freud’s authoritative gaze, transforming a case left as an unfinished treatment into an independent story of a girl overcoming her circumstances and standing on her own. Jung Ju-ri, who is also serving this year as a juror in the Busan International Film Festival’s competition section, said, “As a juror, I have been hoping to encounter a film that shakes me intensely.” She added, “I hope this new film, too, will reach deeply into audiences’ hearts and spark diverse discussions and reverberations.”