The Pulse of K-Entertainment

Kim Min-hee
Actor

Kim Min-hee

Kim Min-hee (김민희) has one of the sharpest late-career second acts in Korean screen culture. After breaking out through modeling and early TV work, she turned into a performer directors can build entire films around, leaning on precision, restraint, and a kind of emotional opacity that keeps scenes open long after they end.

That reputation hardened through her work with Hong Sang-soo and Jeonwonsa Film. Films such as The Handmaiden, The Novelist's Film, By the Stream, and Nowhere to Lay My Eyes show how comfortably she can move between mainstream visibility and austere festival cinema without losing force.

The Locarno Film Festival has become a major site of that recognition. She won the festival's best performance prize in 2024 for By the Stream and returned in 2026 as a co-winner for Nowhere to Lay My Eyes. In a screen landscape where stars such as Jun Ji-hyun carry broad commercial gravity, Kim represents a different kind of authority: exacting, selective, and impossible to reduce to one mode.

0 articles5 creditsSouth Korean

Gallery

Filmography

2026
Nowhere to Lay My EyesFilm
Sang-heeLocarno Film FestivalJeonwonsa Film
2024
By the StreamFilm
LeadJeonwonsa Film
2022
The Novelist's FilmFilm
LeadJeonwonsa Film
2016
The HandmaidenFilm
Lady Hideko

Other Credits

2026
Locarno Best Performance AwardHonor
WinnerLocarno Film Festival

Fans Also Ask

Why did Kim Min-hee win at Locarno in 2026?
Kim Min-hee shared Locarno's best performance prize in 2026 for Nowhere to Lay My Eyes. The film gives her the emotional center as Sang-hee, and the award mattered because it recognized the performance itself rather than treating her as an accessory to an auteur narrative around Hong Sang-soo.
Has Kim Min-hee won at Locarno before?
Yes. The Korea Herald reported that Kim Min-hee also won Locarno's best performance prize in 2024 for By the Stream. That repeat recognition matters because it turns her connection with the festival into a pattern of institutional trust rather than a one-off upset.
What is Kim Min-hee best known for?
Kim Min-hee is best known for a career that spans early commercial visibility and later prestige cinema, with major reference points including The Handmaiden, The Novelist's Film, By the Stream, and Nowhere to Lay My Eyes. Her screen presence is prized for control, mystery, and emotional precision rather than overt theatricality.
Does Kim Min-hee often work with Hong Sang-soo?
Yes. Kim Min-hee has become one of the defining performers in Hong Sang-soo's later work, including By the Stream and Nowhere to Lay My Eyes. That collaboration matters because it has produced some of the most internationally recognized Korean arthouse performances of the past decade.

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