A bucolic university is the site of scandal, boozy meals and mildly subversive theatre in prolific cult hero Hong Sang-soo’s 32nd film.

When a young theatre director (Ha Seong-guk) is fired from a university after having affairs with several students, lecturer Jeo-nim (Kim Min-hee) recruits her uncle (Kwon Hae-hyo) – a blacklisted actor/director who went to the school four decades prior – as a last-minute fill-in for an amateur production. That excites professor Jeong (Cho Yun-hee), a confessed ‘fan’ who’s keen to take him out to dinner. But things go awry when people hate the piece that he’s written.

A festival staple since his debut The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (MIFF 1997), Hong has made 32 features in 28 years, staking his claim as cinema’s foremost chronicler of people making both small-talk and bad decisions, often in the proximity of soju. Working with a host of regulars (this film marks his 13th collaboration with Kim, ninth with Kwon, sixth with Ha and third with Cho), he’s in fine form with the sly By the Stream, which arrives at MIFF one week after its world premiere at Locarno and marks his second film of the fest alongside A Traveler’s Needs.