The Awesome Arrival of Past Lives Director Celine Song

With her directorial debut Past Lives, she made one of the best films of the year. Now, as she begins work on her next project, she's adjusting to life as one of cinema's most promising new auteurs.

- RAYMOND ANG

A RAINY MORNING IN Manhattan's East Village. Celine Song, the director behind the celebrated A24 drama Past Lives, shows up wearing loose black slacks, a heather gray T-shirt, and a heavy black raincoat-a quintessential New York City uniform. As we settle onto a bench in Tompkins Square Park, an aggressive flock of pigeons suddenly swarms us like we're day-old bagels. We sit there for a moment, frozen, before bursting into laughter. "It's fully Hitchcock!" she says.

Song loves New York and all its bizarre unpredictability. Its under-current of creative energy, which she first tapped into after moving here well over a decade ago. "The way that I love this city is not the same as the way that a tourist might like it," Song says. "The way I love it is as somebody who lives here with the rats and the lanternflies." Her film Past Lives is, in many ways, a love letter to the city and its funny possibilities, as specific and true to life as Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing or Woody Allen's Manhattan. Since its Sundance premiere in January, the film has grown into a global art house hit, playing everywhere from Singapore to Serbia. In an entertainment industry obsessed with blockbuster IP, Song's surprise breakout is a rarity: a human-scale story about quiet adult emotions that's nonetheless expected to contend for best picture at next year's Academy Awards.