Twenty-year-old X leaves his home in the industrial district of Guro and enters military service. He deserts from the army and sets out to look for his father, who decided in the meantime to return to his native Philippines. The final part of Roh’s trilogy on environmental pollution is a brooding meditation on the breakdown of capitalism, the fatigue of materialistic civilisation, and the nostalgic desire for lost harmony and primary religious experience. The South Korean filmmaker, strongly influenced by Robert Bresson, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Lisandro Alonso, sought a simple depiction of everyday life. His predominantly muted expression then gives way to disturbing images of a city contaminated with litter, animal carcasses being processed at a meat-packing plant, and the damage to the shoreline after an oil spill. Longed-for redemption lies somewhere deep in the jungle.… The film was premiered at this year’s Rotterdam IFF.