Externally, Saving a Dragonfly is a record of depressing school days. Hong Daye writes a radical diary exposing the intimate wounds she suffered as a teenager. After showing the college entrance exam challenges from formal education and parental confrontations, the story focuses more on the period after high school. At twenty, the crumbling school erases the presence of friends simultaneously. What makes the film so intriguing is that it roughly portrays private experiences and unflinchingly reveals the usefulness—or uselessness—of friendships as an individual grows. In other words, the “event” of me-as-individual is interrupted—or suddenly disappeared—by another event of the friend-as-other. How can we embrace or feud with this? Where did all those friends go? Or were they my friends? That’s why Hong, who speaks as “I” throughout the film, seems less like an isolated ego and more like a marginal figure wavering in a circle of friends. Saving a Dragonfly extends the camera’s time after high school graduation, asking how her friends are doing, even when they don’t answer. [LEE Bora]