Next Sohee—A quiet, two-part tragedy that turns a teenage internship into a national reckoning
Introduction
I pressed play expecting a cautionary tale and found myself holding my breath, as if one gentle exhale might tip this girl’s world over the edge. Have you ever watched a character make all the “right” choices and still slide into a place where right and wrong no longer matter? Next Sohee invites us into that impossible space, first through a bright high schooler desperate to keep up, and then through a detective whose stubborn compassion becomes a lifeline for the truth. The rooms are small—training classrooms, cubicles, interview tables—but the questions are terrifyingly big: who profits when a teenager is pushed past her limit, and who is left to carry the blame? July Jung’s camera doesn’t plead or preach; it simply looks, and that gaze is devastating. If you’ve ever felt crushed between expectation and survival, this film feels like someone finally naming the pressure out loud.
Overview
Title: Next Sohee (다음 소희)
Year: 2022
Genre: Drama, Social Procedural
Main Cast: Kim Si‑eun, Bae Doona, Shim Hee‑sub, Jung Hoe‑rin, Kang Hyun‑oh
Runtime: 138 minutes
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Director: July Jung
Overall Story
The story opens with Sohee, a lively second-year high school student who loves dance and jokes too loudly at lunch, the kind of girl teachers praise when the principal walks by. In a system that prizes employment statistics almost more than education, her teacher beams when he finds her an “externship” at a partner company’s call center—one more tick in the school’s placement column, one more chance for Sohee to prove she’s “ready.” It’s framed as opportunity and responsibility in one neat package; paperwork is stamped, photos are taken, and she’s told to make her school proud. The cultural backdrop matters here: South Korea’s vocational pipeline can send teens into real workplaces long before they’re emotionally prepared, and schools can be rewarded for those placements. Sohee hears the word “training” and thinks skill-building; what awaits her is endurance-building. The film doesn’t editorialize; it lets the process look polished, which makes the cracks hurt more when they appear.
Orientation is a shock wrapped in a smile. A trainer cues up slides not about customer empathy but about lipstick shades and tone, how to sound “smaller,” how to redirect frustration into sales. The roomful of girls practice scripts for the “Save Team,” the division tasked with keeping customers from canceling by any verbal means necessary. When someone asks about breaks or harassment, the answer is a corporate koan: “Follow policy, maintain targets.” The whistle-and-clap rhythms of training day feel like pep rally beats, yet every chant is a quota. July Jung films the scene with the stillness of a journalist; the absence of flashy cuts tells you this isn’t exceptional—it’s normalized. The Guardian wasn’t exaggerating: the exploitation is visible from day one, and it’s disturbingly ordinary.
At first, Sohee buys into the game. She color-codes her script, circles phrases that seem to soothe angry callers, and celebrates her first “save” with noodle cups at a convenience store. Her co-workers, barely older than she is, trade hacks: how to stall a cancellation, how to stretch a call so the customer gives up, how to log a break without appearing “idle.” The first truly vile call lands like a slap—sexual comments disguised as jokes, threats disguised as “feedback.” When Sohee reports it, a supervisor shrugs: don’t escalate unless it costs the company money. That sentence lodges somewhere sharp, and you can feel Sohee’s confidence begin to wobble. The film’s refusal to dramatize the abuse makes it feel even more real.
Her school checks in, but the questions are about performance: “Are you hitting your numbers? Remember, our employment rate is our pride.” The teacher isn’t a villain; he’s a cog, and the machine has already defined “success.” Meanwhile, the call center docks Sohee’s pay over trivialities, schedules her for longer shifts, and pits the team against one another with metrics that reset to zero every morning. Have you ever had a job where the scoreboard erased your best day by sunrise? She’s a teenager, and the math of these expectations is impossible. As missed targets pile up, the ceiling above her seems to sink, inch by inch.
The breaking point is quiet. A customer crosses a line; Sohee’s voice rises; a manager materializes to remind her that “emotion is unprofessional,” then threatens termination that would stain the school’s record. The shame is weaponized: if she fails, she doesn’t just fail herself—she humiliates her class, her homeroom teacher, her family. The film’s first half is full of night buses and flickering fluorescent lights, the spaces where exhaustion turns thoughts dangerous. In the U.S., we’d call this a moment for mental health counseling, a supervisor trained to handle workplace harassment, maybe even a consult with a labor law attorney; in Sohee’s world, there is only the next shift and the next number. She tries to hold herself together, repeating, “I can do it,” like a spell. The spell breaks.
When the worst happens, Jung doesn’t show it. We learn as the adults do, from an urgent call, from the disbelief in a mother’s eyes, from the hush that drops over a once-noisy classroom. The film literally resets: part two begins with Detective Yoo‑jin, played by Bae Doona, returning from leave to a case her colleagues have already decided is “closed.” Yoo‑jin is a different kind of stubborn—the kind that does not accept a world where a teenager’s last weeks are no one’s responsibility. She re-traces Sohee’s days and, in doing so, lets us sit with them again, but this time from the outside looking in. Her questions are simple; the institutions’ answers are not.
The investigation is procedural but never mechanical. Yoo‑jin interviews supervisors who insist they “followed policy,” school administrators who emphasize reputational risk, and co-workers who are terrified to say more than three honest words. When she asks for call logs and training materials, corporate legal replies with absurd redactions. A police colleague suggests compassion equals inefficiency; Yoo‑jin keeps going anyway. She is neither savior nor martyr—just a professional who refuses to normalize cruelty. Forbes captured it well: once the police checked the “suicide” box, most wanted to walk away; Yoo‑jin cannot.
As threads knot together, the film indicts systems rather than pointing to a single mustache-twirling villain. The school chases placement percentages that secure funding and prestige; the company outsources exploitative roles to subcontractors to keep the parent brand clean; the police budget is thin; public outrage, when it arrives, is already looking for the next headline. Yoo‑jin sees how each small abdication adds up to a teenager standing alone in the cold. Director July Jung has said the film was sparked by a real incident and widened into a reckoning with structural blame; you feel that widening as each door closes in the detective’s face. The takeaway is not simply “one bad manager,” but a lattice of incentives that rewards silence.
Formally, Next Sohee is two movies in conversation: a coming‑of‑age curdled into a workplace nightmare, and a police inquiry that treats empathy as evidence. The cinematography shifts from crowded, handheld closeness with Sohee to calmer, more observational frames with Yoo‑jin—grief first-person, then grief documented. The score rarely tells you what to feel; the rooms, fluorescent and airless, do that job themselves. Even the edits feel ethical, refusing to sensationalize Sohee’s final days or Yoo‑jin’s fury. The film’s presence at Cannes Critics’ Week as its closing film signaled its moral urgency; audiences stood for minutes not because the ending is triumphant but because it is honest.
In the final movement, Yoo‑jin corners executives who smirk through apologies that never use the words “we knew.” There may be penalties, reports, even a press conference, but the movie deliberately withholds a clean victory. Instead, it leaves us with Yoo‑jin revisiting a pathway Sohee once walked, pausing at a bus stop where a night breeze still seems to remember her. The exhale you’ve been holding since the opening minutes never quite comes. That’s the point: absence can be an indictment. And the last images suggest a truth scarier than any twist—there will be another Sohee if the incentives don’t change.
The sociocultural critique lands beyond Korea’s borders. U.S. readers will recognize the contours: unpaid or underpaid internships, aggressive sales scripts in customer retention roles, companies that treat turnover as a cost of doing business. If you’ve ever Googled phrases like workplace harassment or wondered whether a workers’ compensation claim could include psychological harm, this story will press on that bruise. Yet the film resists becoming a PSA; it stays tenderly human, anchoring systemic critique in the specificity of a girl who loved to dance and a detective who couldn’t look away. That’s why it lingers—because it asks not just what happened to Sohee, but what happens to all of us when we accept cruelty as normal.
Highlight Scenes / Unforgettable Moments
“Training” with Lipstick Charts: In Sohee’s first orientation, the trainer projects images of lipstick shades and “friendly tones,” teaching girls how to shrink themselves on the phone so customers won’t cancel. The air feels cheerfully oppressive, and the girls dutifully practice. It’s the moment you realize the job isn’t customer support—it’s psychological warfare disguised as service. The camera doesn’t blink, which makes the indoctrination feel routine and therefore more chilling. This single room quietly announces the movie’s thesis about exploitation.
The First Save: Sohee nails her first retention call, and the bullpen erupts in soft applause, paper crowns, and a cheap candy reward. She video-calls a friend outside under a neon sign, laughing about “being good at work,” the city humming behind her. It’s a high that lasts exactly one shift, but July Jung lets her have it—we need to see the hook before we see the line. The juxtaposition of celebration and exhaustion underlines how quickly a metric can become an identity. For a minute, you want to believe the applause means safety.
The Call That Crosses the Line: A caller’s sexual taunts escalate; Sohee tries to reroute the script and fails, heat rising in her voice. When she reports it, her manager scolds her for “provoking” the customer and hands her a warning slip. The words “maintain KPIs” sound like a verdict. Watching a teenager swallow humiliation because a spreadsheet says so is nauseating and, sadly, recognizable. It’s here the film turns from difficult to unbearable in the best cinematic sense.
Numbers Reset to Zero: After a rare good day, Sohee returns to see her dashboard wiped clean, targets refreshed, the hamster wheel spinning. Her colleague jokes, “Today we’re all beginners again,” and the line lands like a threat. On the subway home, she stares at her reflection, practicing a smile she can’t quite hold. The sequence is mundane and merciless—no blow-ups, just attrition. Anyone who’s worked a quota job will feel this bone-deep.
Detective Yoo‑jin Reconstructs the Commute: In part two, Yoo‑jin steps onto Sohee’s bus, stands where Sohee stood, and looks out at the same bleak winter morning. No dialogue, no exposition, just a woman borrowing a teenager’s view as if proximity could equal understanding. It’s respectful and relentless, a ritual of attention that feels like penance. You sense her vow: if institutions won’t remember this girl, I will. Bae Doona makes stillness incandescent.
The Meeting With the Vice Principal: Yoo‑jin sits across from a school official who praises “employability” like it’s a sacrament. When pressed about support systems for students in distress, he pivots to league tables and partnerships. The bureaucratic calm is more infuriating than a raised voice could ever be. The scene maps how PR-friendly language can erase real teenagers in real pain. It’s a mirror many education systems, not just Korea’s, should be brave enough to face.
Memorable Lines
“I can do it. I won’t embarrass anyone.” – Sohee, psyching herself up on her first week It’s a teen mantra that sounds like resolve and reads like pressure. The film shows how borrowed expectations become private vows that hurt to keep and hurt more to break. In those six words you hear a whole system whispering, “Don’t let us down.” The tragedy is how sincerely she means it.
“We followed policy.” – Call center management, closing the door on accountability Corporate language is a Teflon shield here, clean and empty. Yoo‑jin keeps poking at the edges, asking what policy looks like when a child is crying in a bathroom stall. The line reveals how harm can hide in compliance. It’s a reminder that ethics begin where policy ends.
“Are employment numbers worth more than a life?” – Detective Yoo‑jin, to a school official who won’t meet her eyes Bae Doona delivers it without melodrama, which makes it hit harder. The question hovers over every institution in the movie, daring them to answer aloud. It’s the thesis of the second half, shaped as a demand rather than a speech. You feel the room go small around it.
“Tomorrow, you start again at zero.” – A veteran agent, half-joking, half-warning This line is both initiation and curse, the call center’s philosophy in one sentence. It reframes time as a treadmill and achievement as a mirage. Sohee laughs with her co-workers, but her face falls the moment she turns away. The movie understands how rituals of “team spirit” can mask the mathematics of burnout.
“Someone has to say this was wrong.” – Detective Yoo‑jin, alone in the squad room at night It’s not grandstanding; it’s exhaustion with a spine. What she’s up against isn’t one villain but an ecosystem that distributes guilt until it vanishes. The line is a promise to the dead and the living—naming harm is the first form of justice. In that promise, the film finds its fierce, quiet hope.
Why It's Special
The first time Next Sohee settles into your living room, it doesn’t knock; it simply sits beside you and starts telling a story you already recognize from your first job, your first quota, your first quiet panic. Before we dive in, a quick heads-up for U.S. viewers: you can rent or buy Next Sohee on Apple TV and Amazon’s Prime Video, and it’s also streaming with ads on The Roku Channel, with additional availability rotating on platforms like Hoopla. Platform lineups change, but as of late 2025 these are your easiest starting points.
Next Sohee unfolds in two distinct movements. The first tracks a teenager’s work-study placement at a call center, a fluorescent maze where headsets weigh more than they look. The second picks up with a dogged detective who refuses to sign the tidy paperwork that would let everyone move on. Director-writer July Jung designed the film this way on purpose, casting the detective as the story’s anchor once the first half ends—a choice she discussed while reflecting on how she split the narrative into two parts led by different energies.
What makes this design quietly devastating is Jung’s tone: unshowy, clear-eyed, and unwavering. She resists melodrama and lets routine become indictment—close-ups of metrics on whiteboards, managers repeating scripts, the low hum of headsets. Critics at Cannes noted that her restrained direction keeps the camera empathetic and the emotions precise, even when the subject matter seethes. Have you ever felt this way—like a system is nudging you toward a result you never chose?
As the title character, Kim Si-eun gives a performance that starts with spark and hard edges and slowly frays at the seams. You watch confidence calcify into exhaustion, then into something like silence. Industry recognition followed: she was honored as Best New Actress in film at the 59th Baeksang Arts Awards, one of several newcomer prizes she collected for this role.
And then there’s Bae Doona, whose detective refuses to let the aftermath become the ending. Her scenes are practical, procedural even, yet loaded with the moral irritation that bureaucracy keeps trying to swat away. In interviews tied to the film’s international rollout, Bae spoke about playing a cop who won’t normalize tragedy—who keeps the door open until accountability walks through it.
In the best tradition of Korean cinema, Next Sohee blends social-issue drama with a low-burn thriller. It never sprints; it lingers, tracing paperwork trails and minor humiliations until a bigger picture comes into focus. Reviewers abroad called it a chilling portrait of a generation boxed in by metrics, targets, and the cold comfort of “policy.”
The emotional register is compassionate but unsentimental. Jung lets dignity be the film’s softest color, and rage its outline. Even the soundtrack feels like a witness rather than a verdict. If you’ve ever sat at a headset or stood behind a counter wondering who, exactly, you are serving—your customer, your boss, or an algorithm—the film understands, and it doesn’t flinch.
Finally, the film’s two-halves structure offers a kind of ethical relay: the student’s lived experience hands the baton to the investigator’s insistence on truth. That relay keeps the story from ending where many stories end. Instead of catharsis, we get a call—a request to look again, look harder, and look together.
Popularity & Reception
Next Sohee premiered as the closing film of Cannes Critics’ Week in 2022—a rare spotlight for a sophomore feature and an emphatic statement about its craft and urgency. That placement put the movie on the radar of festivalgoers who track Critics’ Week precisely because it spotlights emerging voices; the official selection confirmed what early viewers suspected: July Jung had something important to say and a precise way of saying it.
From there, the festival circuit amplified the buzz. In Montreal, Fantasia International Film Festival selected it as its closing night title and awarded Jung the Cheval Noir Best Director prize, alongside a silver Audience Award for Best Asian Feature—a combination that hints at both critical and crowd resonance.
By 2024 and 2025, the conversation had broadened beyond festivals. The Guardian’s U.K. release review called it a gritty snapshot of how institutions can grind down youth under the guise of “experience,” while other international outlets highlighted the film’s humane rigor. This wasn’t a flash-in-the-pan festival gem; it was a durable talking point in global film culture.
Aggregators tell a similar story. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a strong critical approval score, with blurbs praising its slow-burn intensity and twin lead performances; specialty press in North America echoed that warmth as the movie expanded to limited U.S. theaters in June 2025 and then to home platforms.
Awards bodies also took note back home. At the 59th Baeksang Arts Awards, Kim Si-eun won Best New Actress and July Jung won Best Screenplay, while the film factored into broader year-end critics’ lists and guild honors—proof that its impact wasn’t confined to festival spotlights but carried into mainstream recognition.
Cast & Fun Facts
When we first meet Kim Si-eun as Sohee, she has the kind of energy teachers both prize and attempt to manage: bright, determined, a little stubborn. Kim fills that space with precise micro-shifts—posture shortening during team briefings, eye contact wobbling at the tenth angry call of the day. The part asks her to chart a believable slide from optimism to overwhelm, and she does so without begging the camera for sympathy.
That restraint is part of why her peers and critics hailed her. The Baeksang Best New Actress trophy wasn’t merely a “welcome to the industry” handshake; it read like acknowledgement that Kim had threaded the needle between intensity and interiority. The performance lingers not because it is loud, but because it is exact.
As Detective Oh Yoo-jin, Bae Doona operates like a tuning fork: everyone else’s evasions create vibrations you can feel in her stillness. She enters the story after its shattering, yet she’s never just a conduit for exposition. Bae makes Yoo-jin’s process—listening, confirming, confronting—play like a moral ritual, each step a refusal to let convenience win.
There’s a lovely meta-thread here: Bae Doona previously collaborated with director July Jung on A Girl at My Door, and Jung has said she cast Bae first this time, knowing the second half needed an actor with the aura and steadiness to carry the investigation. You sense that trust on screen; the camera seems relieved each time it can rest on Bae’s face and let complexity accumulate.
Among the supporting players, Shim Hee-sub gives Lee Jun-ho—Sohee’s supervisor—a fragile, humane center. He is the rare boss who recognizes the ground slipping beneath his team, and Shim plays him as a man quietly at war with a system that doesn’t reward care. In a story about institutional momentum, his gentleness reads as a radical act.
What makes Shim’s turn hurt is its plausibility. He isn’t mythologized as a saint; he’s tired, compromised, and for a moment, a lifeline. When that lifeline frays, the film’s thesis—that responsibility is distributed, not dodged—lands with greater force.
Then there is Park Soo-young as the vice principal, the embodiment of well-meaning metrics turned blunt-force tools. Park locates the character’s logic: if employment rates look good on paper, then the school earns prestige, and prestige means opportunity—right? He never twirls a mustache; he fills out a spreadsheet. The effect is chilling.
In his scenes, you can almost hear the click of administrative language replacing care. Park’s performance reminds us that harm can be cumulative and polite, the result of boxes ticked by people who believe they are doing their jobs. By playing the vice principal as a man of forms rather than fangs, he becomes one of the film’s most quietly unsettling figures.
Finally, a word about July Jung, the director and writer whose signature is restraint sharpened into clarity. After her acclaimed debut A Girl at My Door (itself a Cannes selection), she returns here with a structure that reorients our gaze from lived experience to accountability—and back again. Critics have praised her “unshowy but solid” direction, noting how she elevates performances while keeping the frame ethically focused.
For a fun behind-the-scenes note: during the film’s international press, both Jung and Bae discussed how the second half required an actor audiences naturally trust, because trust itself becomes the engine of the investigation. It’s a rare case where casting functions as theme, not just talent arrangement, and it helps explain why the film lingers long after the last call disconnects.
Conclusion / Warm Reminders
If you’ve ever been made to feel replaceable by a spreadsheet, Next Sohee will sit with you rather than scold you. When the credits roll, consider sharing it with someone starting their first job—or someone who forgot how that first job felt. And if the movie stirs up personal memories, accessible options like online therapy can help you process them, while a conversation with an employment law attorney or even a workers’ compensation lawyer may be useful if you’re navigating a similar workplace today. Above all, let the film’s quiet insistence remind you: accountability is a team sport.
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