South Korea’s Sidus returns to the global stage with the boundary-pushing supernatural thriller “S Line,” premiering its first two episodes at Canneseries Season 8, which kicked off April 24.
The six-episode series, created and produced by Handae Rhee and co-created and directed by Jooyoung Ahn, explores a provocative premise: What if sexual connections between people became visible as physical red threads? When glasses that reveal these intimate links fall into the wrong hands, chaos ensues as privacy becomes a public commodity.
“We started developing ‘S Line’ 10 years ago. The original webcomic hit us like a shock of electricity,” says Rhee, who serves as executive producer at Sidus. “Once the invisible S lines become visible, a single revelation spirals into turmoil for an individual, a family, ultimately for society itself.”
The long-gestating project arrives with Rhee acknowledging the series has faced numerous obstacles during its decade of development. “I’m still courting platforms, precisely because the series isn’t a neat love story or a happy ending; it’s polarizing by design,” Rhee explains.
Director Ahn, who also co-wrote the series alongside Hogil Hwang and Joonhyun Kim, adapted the original webcomic with significant changes. While the source material depicted a world where everyone suddenly sees sexual connections, the series approaches the concept as a prequel where only those wearing special glasses can perceive these ties.
“For the series, we kept the premise but focused it on one character’s inner world, aiming for a sharper and more intense narrative,” says co-writer Hwang. “Our biggest question was who should be the one to get the glasses so that the audience would be interested in following the story to the end.”
The series stars Soohyuk Lee as detective Han Ji-wook, K-pop star Arin (of girl group Oh My Girl) as Hyun-heup — a young woman who can naturally see the S lines — and Dahee Lee. The premise combines supernatural elements with detective storytelling.
“I viewed the red threads in the world of ‘S Line’ as visual extensions of each character’s innermost nature and desire,” explains actor Soohyuk Lee. “Because the character I play is the one chasing the truth behind the S lines, he views everything through an objective, analytical lens.”
For Arin, portraying her character presented unique challenges: “I had to express things people rarely say out loud, so I concentrated on subtle facial expressions and behaviors that either suppress or reveal emotions.”
While the concept might seem designed to provoke, Ahn insists the series uses sexuality more as a vehicle than a focus. “We decided to treat sex and the sex line itself as a MacGuffin. If eroticism took center stage, the message we wanted to deliver would lose its clarity,” the director explains. “Because feelings of shame and ideas about surveillance vary by culture and generation, we approached them with the broadest, most open stance we could. Sex is an instinct; unless it violates social norms, there’s no inherent reason for shame. So we zeroed in on the specific situations that can trigger shame, the atmospheres that breed it, and, equally important, the people who try to exploit those moments.”
The series draws from East Asian folklore about red threads of fate but repurposes the concept for the digital age. “I believe invisible S lines already surround us. Just look at the countless connections we forge on the internet every day,” says Ahn. “It isn’t a tangible strand you can touch; it’s a link you can delete or spawn at will, make visible when it isn’t there, or hide even when it is – just like the fluid, ever-shifting ties that criss-cross the online world.”
Developing the visual language for these connections presented its own challenges. “The real pressure lay less in raw technical limits than in deciding how the S lines should appear on-screen while staying budget-efficient,” notes Rhee regarding the production’s VFX approach.
Co-writer Joonhyun Kim sums up the series’ thematic core: “Everyone has their own sexual desires and tastes, yet almost no one reveals them openly. Paradoxically, we pretend not to care while sneakily prying into other people’s sex lives with intense curiosity.”
Despite its Korean origins and cultural specificity, Rhee believes “S Line” has universal appeal: “Although ‘S Line’ is a Korean series, it focuses on human desire and conflict, giving it a universality that global audiences can immediately relate to.”
The Canneseries premiere is expected to feature the attendance of director Jooyoung Ahn and cast members Lee Soo Hyuk, Arin, Eunsaem Lee, and Nam Kyu Hee.
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