YOUM Kyubock / Korea / 2026 / 99 min / Competition  

The journey of Noden the rhinoceros and a penguin begins as an adventure in search of a place to live. Yet their destination is unclear from the very beginning. Human desire and violence have utterly devastated the lives of animals, leaving these displaced creatures with no choice but to keep walking and moving on. In , the road is both a passage toward freedom and a stretch of time that those who have been driven from their homes must cross in order to survive. A penguin and a rhinoceros. Between these two different species, which seem unlikely to ever share the same scale, the film never erases their differences. A rhinoceros and a penguin are profoundly different—in their bodies, their instincts, and the worlds they have inhabited. And yet they walk together, making up for each other’s losses. In a world bound together by grief, family is not completed by blood. It is the willingness to carry someone with you to the very end, and the belief that there is someone who will not leave you alone. An idealistic and innocent bond, perhaps, but one so tenacious that it gently holds everything together. Even so, the film does not allow the comfort of a fairy tale to erase the pain of loss. The dead do not return, and there is no sign that the world they have lost can ever be restored. At the same time, it does not allow grief to consume everything. As if reminding us that, in this wearisome life, one must eventually keep walking even after losing a shoe, the two friends quietly accept their profound sorrow. By taking on each other’s shortcomings, the two become companions who have found a shared task in life. The film’s way of heightening emotion, however, is somewhat direct. Death and sorrow recur, while music is used emphatically over them, allowing the sadness to overflow almost inevitably. And yet the warmth within this little refuge remains precious, because in a reality where it has become all too easy to discard too much and walk away, the values preserved here have become all the more rare​