Auteur's 35th feature competes for Golden Leopard, the top prize he won in 2015 with 'Right Now, Wrong Then' 'Nowhere to Lay My Eyes' starring Kim Min-hee (Jeonwonsa Film) Hong Sang-soo is heading back to Locarno.The director's latest film, "Nowhere to Lay My Eyes," will have its world premiere in the main competition at the 79th edition of the Swiss festival, his production company Jeonwonsa Film said Friday.The festival, which runs Aug. 5-15, unveiled its full lineup Thursday. Hong's film is one of 17 titles vying for the Golden Leopard, the event's top honor.Kim Min-hee stars as Sang-hee, a woman who travels with her younger brother to Jeju Island to visit their mother for the first time in a decade. Kim has been Hong's off-screen partner for many years, and the couple welcomed a son last year.Choi Myung-gil and Shin Seok-ho round out the cast alongside Kwon Hae-hyo and Park Mi-so, both longtime members of the director's informal repertory of actors.Known for his spare, talk-heavy dramas centered on chance encounters and conversations over drinks, Hong has long been a mainstay of the European festival circuit.Berlin has been his most regular stop of late, where his films collected four Silver Bears between 2020 and 2024, including grand jury prizes for "The Novelist's Film" and "A Traveler's Needs." Kim won the festival's best actress award in 2017 for "On the Beach at Night Alone."At Locarno, Hong took the Golden Leopard in 2015 for "Right Now, Wrong Then.""Nowhere to Lay My Eyes" is Hong's 35th feature and his second to premiere this year, after "The Day She Returns" debuted in the Berlinale's Panorama section in February and opened in South Korean theaters in May.Hong has released all of his films since 2014 through Jeonwonsa Film, the Seoul-based production company he owns and runs.The director is famous for his stripped-down methods, often shooting with skeleton crews, writing scenes the morning they are filmed and handling cinematography, editing and music himself. Kim, too, has become part of the operation, serving as a production manager on his recent works.