Celine Song

A long-time immigrant once remarked, "For someone living an immigrant life that began after the age of thirty, I sometimes thought that 'identity' is like a 'ghost'." They explained that there are moments when it feels as if 'another me'—the person living the life they might have had if they had stayed in Korea, walking a path they never got to take—is speaking to them from behind. They were not alone in feeling this way. Celine Song (Song Ha-young), who immigrated to Markham, Ontario at the age of 12, studied psychology at Queen's University, and is now an internationally acclaimed director and playwright, offered a tender greeting to that ghost through her debut film, Past Lives. And Past Lives: Screenplay Book (2025), a compilation of the script that served as the film's backbone, has returned to us not merely as a scriptbook, but as a mirror reflecting the souls of our Korean diaspora living on Canadian soil.