Heavy Snow (폭설)

❄️ "Heavy Snow" (폭설) is a touching coming-of-age story of two lives buried deep in each other. So what’s in this title? A “fierce” force of nature.


🎬 Main trailer (English subs):

Smilla (from the novel Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow) had a keen sense of snow, and the Inuit have dozens of words to describe it. What about Koreans? The Korean title of this film "폭설" (pok-seol) describes snow in a way that’s quite different from the weight-bearing English phrase “heavy” snowfall. The Korean character “pok” means violent, fierce, ferocious, pointing to the kind of unexpected inclement weather that buries the world at least a foot deep. The violence aspect that the word embodies is a reminder of the harshness of nature that cannot be tamed by humans. Some of the other Korean words for snow take on gentler meanings: hambag-nun (함박눈) - fluffy snow; poseul-nun (포슬눈) - powdery snow; ssaragi-nun (싸라기눈) - grainy snow; garang-nun (가랑눈) - sprinkling snow; and doduk-nun (도둑눈) - thief-like snow that descends stealthily overnight.

The winter motif, landscapes, and mise-en-scene in the film continue throughout, especially with the two main characters reuniting against the backdrop of the winter sea, with the waves crashing against and interlacing with one another like the lives of the two women.