Past Lives is a 2023 romantic drama film written and directed by Celine Song in her feature directorial debut.

[5] Past Lives premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2023, and was released theatrically in the United States on June 2, 2023.

It was named one of the top ten films of 2023 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute, receiving praise from critics and multiple accolades, with five nominations at the 81st Golden Globe Awards including for Best Motion Picture - Drama and nominations at the 96th Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.

In 2000, in Seoul, South Korea, Na Young and Hae Sung are 12-year-old classmates who develop feelings for one another and go on a playdate set up by their parents.

They reconnect through video calls but are unable to visit each other, as Nora plans to attend a writer's retreat in Montauk and Hae Sung is moving to China for a Mandarin language exchange.

At her retreat, Nora meets Arthur Zaturansky and they fall in love, at one point discussing the Buddhist-derived concept of inyeon (인연, dependent origination), how a relationship between two souls in the present life is influenced by interactions in thousands of past lives.

The apartment sets for Hae Sung and Nora's Skype/Zoom conversations were built adjacent to one another at Greenpoint Studios, Brooklyn, and filmed simultaneously.

The website's consensus reads: "A remarkable debut for writer-director Celine Song, Past Lives uses the bonds between its sensitively sketched central characters to support trenchant observations on the human condition.

[21] Manola Darghis, writing for The New York Times, compared the film to French romantic cinema, complimenting its restraint in the presentation of its main themes, and stating: "The movie’s modesty — its intimacy, human scale, humble locations and lack of visual oomph — is one of its strengths.

There are few big, look-at-me details, though you might notice a poster for Jacques Rivette’s 1974 classic Céline and Julie Go Boating in Nora’s father’s home office in Seoul.

"[22] Writing in The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw was fulsome in his praise of the film comparing it to those of Richard Linklater, Noah Baumbach, and Greta Gerwig.

[25] Other filmmakers, such as Allison Anders, Reinaldo Marcus Green, Andrew Haigh, Max Hechtman and Zoe Lister-Jones cited it as among their favorite films of 2023.

[26][27] Collider ranked it number 7 on its list of the "20 Best Drama Movies of the 2020s So Far", calling it "a story that could only exist because of modern circumstances, but feels timeless in its approach.

[29] Looper also named it the "Best PG-13 Movie of All Time," calling it "a master class in the art of subtlety while evoking complex human emotions.