Sometimes fortune arrives disguised as coincidence. What benefits one person may just as easily set the stage for another.
For Jihoon, that coincidence came the very day he landed in Cannes to attend the film festival for the second time in this lifetime.
He had barely stepped out into the arrival hall when fate placed someone directly in his path—a man who would become the key holder to the treasure Jihoon planned to seize in Hong Kong the following year.
The funny part was that Jihoon had never met this man in his current life.
Yet in his previous one, they had been close—closer than Jihoon had been with almost anyone else.
'Friend' wasn't a word Jihoon often used in his old life.
But this man, somehow, had slipped past his defenses.
He wasn't a soulmate in the sentimental sense, rather, they were bonded through an artistic kinship, bound by a shared lens on the world.
Both of them were daring filmmakers who used cinema as a weapon—to confront injustice, to question morality, and to peel back the polished layers of society to reveal the uncomfortable truths underneath.
His name was Jiangwen, a director, an actor, and a provocateur.
At first glance, people might dismiss him as unfocused, a man drifting between directing and acting without fully committing to either.
But Jihoon knew better.
Jiangwen was a creative storm, brimming with imagination, ideas spilling out faster than any one career could contain.
His refusal to choose one lane wasn't a weakness; it was proof of his versatility and fearlessness.
And while his name might not dominate headlines in the West, plenty of people had already seen him without even realizing it.
'Star Wars' fans, for instance, would remember his role as Baze Malbus in Rogue One, where he fought side by side with Donnie Yen—the legendary Ip Man himself, hailed as the modern-day Bruce Lee.
But Jiangwen's real weight wasn't in Hollywood cameos.
It was in his work as a Chinese filmmaker—bold, unorthodox, and often defiant.
His films dared to push against the limits of state-sanctioned narratives, so much so that he had been banned from directing in his own country for years.
The irony was sharp: in 2000, one of his films won the Cannes Jury Prize, a mark of international respect, and that recognition was precisely what drew the ire of the authorities back home.
Yet Jiangwen never fled.
He could have just left China, sought comfort abroad, and made films without restriction.
Instead, he stayed. He endured the ban, bided his time, and waited for the storm to pass.
When the freeze finally lifted, he picked up the camera again on his own soil, refusing to abandon the land that both suffocated and inspired him. And such limitation is the real breeding ground that cultivate a real achiever.
If someone asked Jihoon who he respected most in the global film industry, he would have answered without hesitation: Jiangwen of China and Aamir Khan of India.
Both men, in their own ways, used cinema not just for entertainment but as a mirror held to society's ugliest contradictions.
Aamir Khan, in particular, stood out as India's sharpest voice against entrenched hierarchies and hypocrisies.
While Korean society often confined its people with invisible ceilings tied to birthright and status, India's struggles were even more brutal.
In Korea, life might feel suffocating under the weight of hierarchy.
In India, life itself could be endangered when the public dared to raise its voice.
The key difference lay in the machinery of media.
In Korea, control of information was fragmented, spread across powerful families both domestic and international.
But in India, the narrative belonged almost entirely to the elite—the fair-skinned dynasties like the Ambanis, who ruled the media landscape with iron grip.
Resistance in India, therefore, was infinitely more complex. Speaking up wasn't just difficult; it was dangerous.
And yet, Aamir Khan challenged it. Just as Jiangwen did in China.
Now, turning back to Jiangwen.
Although he was banned for years from filmmaking in his own country, he accepted it without complaint.
He didn't lash out, nor did he played the victim, and didn't curse the system that punished him—even though he had brought international honor to China.
Most people in his position would have felt betrayed.
After all, an award-winning director isn't just an artist; he's a national asset.
Think of James Cameron: whenever his name is mentioned, people immediately think of Titanic—and by extension, America.
That's the power of a globally celebrated filmmaker: their success becomes part of their nation's prestige.
By the same logic, Jiangwen should have been celebrated as a symbol of Chinese cultural strength.
Instead, despite winning the prestigious Cannes Jury Prize, he was punished.
And yet, he took it like a man—acknowledging that he had crossed a line and accepting the consequences without bitterness.
The cause of his ban lay in his 2000 masterpiece, 'Devils on the Doorstep'.
On the surface, it was a black comedy, a satire draped in political mockery.
But beneath that, it was a searing allegory: a film about the absurdity of war, the contradictions of human nature, and a daring re-examination of Chinese identity during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
But the film touched nerves too raw to be forgiven.
First, he humanized the Japanese enemy.
For a nation still scarred by history, this was unthinkable.
The memory of Japan's invasion—especially atrocities like the Nanjing Massacre, where over 200,000 unarmed civilians were slaughtered—remained a wound that never healed.
To portray Japanese soldiers with sympathy or complexity was seen not as art, but as betrayal.
Second, he depicted Chinese peasants not as noble heroes but as frightened, flawed, and sometimes cowardly.
This clashed directly with Communist mythology, which glorified peasants as the backbone of revolution and resistance.
By stripping them of heroism, Jiangwen undermined an official narrative that the state had spent decades building.
And finally, there was the nihilistic ending.
'Devils on the Doorstep' closes with despair—no redemption, no triumph, no catharsis, only futility.
For state censors, this was unacceptable.
To them, art must instill hope, unity, and pride in the national spirit.
Jiangwen's film offered none of these.
In the end, his brilliance was punished because he dared to hold up a mirror that was too sharp, too unflinching for his country to accept.
But to Jihoon, this was precisely why Jiangwen deserved respect.
It wasn't just that his film embarrassed the regulators or stirred controversy—it was his philosophy of cinema itself.
Jiangwen treated film as both art and puzzle.
His passion was undeniable.
Watching his films wasn't passive entertainment; it was active work.
Audiences had to bring knowledge, patience, and insight to untangle the riddles he laid before them.
That, however, was also the tragedy.
His films were steeped in Asian cultural nuances, historical references, and even ancient Chinese poetry.
Without that background, international audiences often couldn't fully grasp his intent.
His box office strength remained mostly domestic—not because his art lacked quality, but because it demanded understanding.
Jiangwen became notorious for embedding rebellious messages in plain sight—in dialogue, in subtle gestures, even in costume design.
To Jihoon, Jiang Wen was the only filmmaker whose subtitles could never be taken at face value.
To truly grasp his work, one had to watch his films multiple times.
He was, in every sense, a rebel—a filmmaker who refused to dilute his vision for clarity or convenience.
Now, standing here in Cannes, fate had brought that same rebel before Jihoon once again—only this time, in a different life, with the promise of a new beginning.
They had never met in this lifetime, but their paths had already been intertwined in the last.
Jiang Wen extended his hand with an easy smile.
"You must be Jihoon," he said. "Nice to meet you. I'm Jiangwen—but you can call me Jiang."