The film opens with Seo-Won, the protagonist, sharing the day-to-day life of her children with another mother. Despite the superfluous mundaneness of the conversation, the lament of a home left behind in a different country becomes apparent. However, before the viewer can declare the film to be the exploration of immigrant identity, the narrative deliberately fractures itself, presenting us with fragments of memory, thoughts, arguments, and forgotten troubles that lie somewhere buried in a life lived long and hard. 

In the process, familial guilt, anger, resentment, loss, but more importantly, the people who get left behind, alongside those who leave, are conjured by the film. However, how much of memory can truly be trusted? The film presents the question, while emphasizing how sometimes memory, no matter how unreliable a narrator, is the only entity that you have left, the only tenuous connection to an even more fragile notion of home. 

Through a competent screenplay, and equally complementary performances, the narrative conjures all of this, and some more. It spans an entire spectrum of identity, and belongingness, both ideas disrupted by disorienting thoughts, the causes of this disorientation eventually explained at the end. All of this is then very intimately tied with the protagonist's experience of not only having left a home behind but also the relentless efforts of building one in a foreign land.

Home | Short Film Nominee

Equipped with snacks, a ring light, and emotional undercurrents impossible to shake off, four girls record a video. However, there is a far more sinister entity uncurling its limbs behind the scenes of this inane activity. 

 The film establishes a component of violence and thrill alongside the aforementioned reality. An interaction with all of these elements also allows a glimpse at a society where the preoccupation with internet fame is rampant, and where many young people see its achievement as an end to the mundaneness of their own life. In a bid to go viral, and therefore get a chance to leave their dull school life behind, the young women record their video, completely unaware of the threat of violence that looms right above their heads. 

The movement from the establishment of the premise to the conflict, crisis, and climax arrives swiftly, without wasting any beats. The screenplay and performances facilitate this progression. The entirety of the plot unfolds within a limited physical space, keeping itself deliberately and efficiently lean. The short in its current form can serve as an ideal concept for a feature, building on the shock value it conjures at its conclusion, once again, pronouncing the contemporary world’s obsession with virtual fame, and the extent to which young people are willing to go for it.

Al Chang

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