New Yorker Names Pak’s Clytaemnestra Top Film of 2022

Visual and Media Arts Assistant Professor Ougie Pak‘s feature film, Clytaemnestra, was included in The New Yorker‘s list of “The Best Movies of 2022.”

New Yorker film critic Richard Brody wrote that, in creating the list, “I compile the movies that imposed themselves on memory and which (even if their subjects are grim or their tones are severe) have provided enduring pleasures and illuminations.”

The film, which premiered online at BAMcinemaFest in June 2021, follows a group of Korean actresses (and one actor), who gather in a rented house in Greece to rehearse a production of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. When the director introduces a famous actress to the mix, her attitude destroys the chemistry, and the director’s abusive attitude toward them points toward tragedy.

In reviewing the theatrical release of the film in June 2022, Brody wrote:

Pak’s dramatic conception is deft and daring, as seen in dream sequences realized with a light touch and an uninhibited directness. Pak revels in the text and the form of the play itself, emphasizing the power of the Aeschylean poetry in scenes featuring the actors in street garb (even a Hard Rock Café T-shirt) overriding the incongruous banality of household circumstances to thrust the play’s furies onto the screen with a jolting immediacy.