# Celine Song

Celine Song (born Song Ha-Young; Korean: 송하영; born September 19, 1988) is a Canadian director, playwright, and screenwriter based in the United States. Among her plays are Endlings and The Seagull on The Sims 4 (both 2020). Her directorial film debut Past Lives (2023) received critical acclaim, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.

## Early life and education

Song was born in South Korea. Her parents, both artists, moved the family to Markham, Ontario, Canada when she was 12. Her father, Song Neung-han, is a filmmaker. Her mother is an illustrator and graphic designer. She has hinted at her Western name being a reference to the character in the 1974 film Celine and Julie Go Boating, directed by Jacques Rivette.
Song wrote her first play, an adaptation of Prometheus, at a classics conference she attended (the Ontario Student Classics Conference) with the Markham District Classics Club.
Song attended Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario for her undergraduate degree where she studied psychology with a minor in philosophy, before receiving her MFA in playwriting from Columbia University in New York in 2014.

## Career
### 2019–2020: Off-Broadway works

Song's play Endlings premiered in 2019 at the American Repertory Theater. The show's off-Broadway run opened in March 2020 at New York Theatre Workshop, but was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The show tells the story of three older Korean women haenyeos and a Korean-Canadian writer living in New York. In a mixed review, Alexandra Schwartz of The New Yorker described Endlings as "two works spliced roughly together: a traditional play that seeks to depict people’s lives, and a metafictional examination of the playwright’s own motivations, which flirts with honesty before traipsing down a solipsistic path of no return." The play was chosen for the 2018 O'Neill Playwrights Conference and was a finalist for the 2020 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
In November 2020, Song directed a live production of Chekhov's The Seagull using The Sims 4 on Twitch for New York Theatre Workshop, called The Seagull on The Sims 4. In a review for Vulture, Helen Shaw praised the experimental play: "I think Song’s game-play/play-game managed the trick by capturing the experience not of going to a show but of working on one. At her urging, viewers brought the quality of attention that comes with collaboration, and that felt like a churning motor under everything, trying to propel the show into being."
Song's other plays include Tom and Eliza, which was named a semifinalist for the American Playwriting Foundation's 2016 Relentless Award, Family, and The Feast. According to her biography on The Playwright's Realm, "she has been awarded residences, fellowships, and commissions from MTC/Sloan, Sundance, the Millay Colony for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Edward F. Albee Foundation."

### 2021–present: Breakthrough with Past Lives

Song wrote the screenplay for Past Lives, her directorial film debut, about two childhood friends who later reunite as adults (portrayed by Greta Lee and Teo Yoo). The film is partly inspired by Song's life, specifically a dinner she had with her English-speaking husband and her Korean-speaking friend visiting New York. She said that "at one point, I realized that I wasn't just translating between their languages and cultures, but also translating between these two parts of myself as well." The film was produced by A24 and premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January 2023.
Past Lives received critical acclaim and has been compared to the work of Richard Linklater, Woody Allen, and Noah Baumbach. The Guardian's Benjamin Lee wrote that "as writer, Song manages to keep her dialogue believably light-footed and spare while as director, she confidently and evocatively captures both cities with a breadth that belies her inexperience". Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair hailed the film as "understated and yet vast in its consideration of the slow changes of life, of the past ever whispering to the present. The film is as auspicious a debut as one can hope to see at Sundance, the announcement of a filmmaker confident in her craft and generous with her heart." The film received many accolades including nominations for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay at the 96th Academy Awards. Song was the first Asian woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and the first Asian female director to be nominated in both the Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay categories of the Academy Awards.
Song's first television screenwriting job was as a staff writer for the first season of Amazon's The Wheel of Time in 2021. In April 2024, the music video for pop artist Laufey's song "Goddess" was released, directed by Song. Her next film project, Materialists, is in production with A24, and will star Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans.

## Personal life

Song resides in New York City with her husband, writer Justin Kuritzkes, whom she met at an artist residency hosted by the Edward F. Albee Foundation. Song says that he is always the first person to read her scripts.

## Filmography

Television
| Year | Title | Note | Ref. |
| 2021 | The Wheel of Time | Staff writer; Wrote episode "Blood Calls Blood" | |
Film
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Ref. |
| 2023 | Past Lives | Yes | Yes | Executive | |
| 2025 | Materialists | Yes | Yes | Yes | |

## Theatre

| Year | Title | Role | Notes | Ref. |
| 2020 | Endlings | Playwright | NYTW; February–March, 2020 | |
| 2020 | The Seagull on The Sims 4. | Playwright | NYTW; October 27–28, 2020 | |

## Accolades

| Association | Year | Category | Work | Result | Ref. |
| Alliance of Women Film Journalists | 2023 | Best Director | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Alliance of Women Film Journalists | 2023 | Best Original Screenplay | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Alliance of Women Film Journalists | 2023 | Best Woman Director | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Alliance of Women Film Journalists | 2023 | Best Woman Screenwriter | Past Lives | Won | |
| Asia Pacific Screen Awards | 2023 | Best Director | Past Lives | Won | |
| Berlin International Film Festival | 2023 | Golden Bear | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Boston Society of Film Critics | 2023 | Best New Filmmaker | Past Lives | Won | |
| British Independent Film Awards | 2023 | Best International Independent Film | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Chicago Film Critics Association | 2023 | Best Original Screenplay | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Chicago Film Critics Association | 2023 | Milos Stehlik Award for Breakthrough Filmmaker | Past Lives | Won | |
| Dallas–Fort Worth Film Critics Association | 2023 | Best Director | Past Lives | 5th place | |
| Dublin Film Critics' Circle | 2023 | Best Director | Past Lives | Won | |
| Florida Film Critics Circle | 2023 | Best Director | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Florida Film Critics Circle | 2023 | Best First Film | Past Lives | Won | |
| Florida Film Critics Circle | 2023 | Best Original Screenplay | Past Lives | Won | |
| Florida Film Critics Circle | 2023 | Pauline Kael Breakout Award | Past Lives | Runner-up | |
| Gotham Awards | 2023 | Best Feature | Past Lives | Won | |
| Gotham Awards | 2023 | Breakthrough Director | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Los Angeles Film Critics Association | 2023 | New Generation Award | Past Lives | Won | |
| National Board of Review | 2023 | Best Directorial Debut | Past Lives | Won | |
| New York Film Critics Online | 2023 | Best Debut Director | Past Lives | Won | |
| San Diego Film Critics Society | 2023 | Best First Feature | Past Lives | Runner-up | |
| San Diego Film Critics Society | 2023 | Best Original Screenplay | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| St. Louis Film Critics Association | 2023 | Best Director | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| St. Louis Film Critics Association | 2023 | Best Original Screenplay | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Sydney Film Festival | 2023 | Best Film | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Toronto Film Critics Association | 2023 | Best Original Screenplay | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association | 2023 | Best Director | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association | 2023 | Best Original Screenplay | Past Lives | Won | |
| Academy Awards | 2024 | Best Original Screenplay | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Astra Film Awards | 2024 | Best Director | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Astra Film Awards | 2024 | Best First Feature | Past Lives | Won | |
| Astra Film Awards | 2024 | Best Original Screenplay | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Austin Film Critics Association | 2024 | Best Director | Past Lives | Nominated | [39] [40] |
| Austin Film Critics Association | 2024 | Best First Film | Past Lives | Won | [39] [40] |
| Austin Film Critics Association | 2024 | Best Original Screenplay | Past Lives | Won | [39] [40] |
| Austin Film Critics Association | 2024 | The Robert R. "Bobby" McCurdy Memorial Breakthrough Artist Award | Past Lives | Nominated | [39] [40] |
| British Academy Film Awards | 2024 | Best Original Screenplay | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| British Academy Film Awards | 2024 | Best Film Not in the English Language | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Critics' Choice Movie Awards | 2024 | Best Original Screenplay | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Directors Guild of America Awards | 2024 | Outstanding Directing – First-Time Feature Film | Past Lives | Won | |
| Independent Spirit Awards | 2024 | Best Director | Past Lives | Won | |
| Independent Spirit Awards | 2024 | Best Screenplay | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Georgia Film Critics Association | 2024 | Best Director | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Georgia Film Critics Association | 2024 | Best Original Screenplay | Past Lives | Runner-up | |
| Georgia Film Critics Association | 2024 | Breakthrough Award | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Golden Globe Awards | 2024 | Best Motion Picture - Drama | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Golden Globe Awards | 2024 | Best Director | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Golden Globe Awards | 2024 | Best Screenplay | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| International Cinephile Society | 2024 | Best Debut Film | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| London Film Critics' Circle | 2024 | Screenwriter of the Year | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| National Society of Film Critics | 2024 | Best Screenplay | Past Lives | Runner-up | |
| Online Film Critics Society | 2024 | Best Director | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Online Film Critics Society | 2024 | Best Original Screenplay | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Online Film Critics Society | 2024 | Best Feature Debut | Past Lives | Won | |
| San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle | 2024 | Best Director | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle | 2024 | Best Original Screenplay | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Satellite Awards | 2024 | Best Original Screenplay | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Seattle Film Critics Society | 2024 | Best Director | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Seattle Film Critics Society | 2024 | Best Screenplay | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Sundance Film Festival | 2024 | Vanguard Award | — | Won | |
| Writers Guild of America Awards | 2024 | Best Original Screenplay | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Blue Dragon Film Awards | 2024 | Best New Director | Past Lives | Nominated | |
| Blue Dragon Film Awards | 2024 | Best Screenplay | Past Lives | Nominated | |