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 the 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 behind a home but also the relentless efforts of building one in a foreign land.

Home | Spotlight

The film is heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. It reminds you of many firsts - love, moving out, stepping foot in the adult world. However, above all, it is a story of hope, expectation and the endless possibilities that constitute the horizon once you have decided to move forth in the world, irrespective of the lack of familiarity with this new, uncharted territory. 

The protagonist, Lizzie, finds herself at the cusp of some very crucial life decisions. Her life so far has been marked by a dichotomy of what she thought she should make of familial structures, the domestic space and relationships, and what they had stood for in actuality. It is only after this lack of acknowledgment, and perhaps even denial, that she is beginning to finally realise who she truly is, and what she truly wants. The remarkable storytelling invokes the idea of home, one far from what Lizzie had struggled to reconcile with amidst marital trouble between her parents. Consequently there awaits her a shattering of the notions she has inculcated, along with the awareness that home is not what she had believed it all along to be.


 In a sense, the film is constituted by several moments weaved together, but essentially, at its core, it's about no more than a single realisation, one that truly sets you free. The film does not stand out for its visuals, not for the lack of technique or skill, but perhaps more because of limited resources. And yet, this does not in any way imply that the story is any less powerful, the characters any less real. It is true and authentic to an experience to the point of having secured a universal appeal, and in that sense, it is the story of not only Lizzie, but of innumerable people who are striving to find a sense of home or belonging after having been betrayed from the space they had always believed or expected to play this particular role in their lives.

Coming Home | Short Film of the Day

There is something otherworldly, almost supernatural, about two women sitting in shadows, meticulously working on a piece of art. If you would have disagreed with this premise so far, this short film is here to change your mind in the most convincing manner. Choosing to locate its story a few decades into the future, the plot deals with the endeavours of two sisters to sell their figurines on a live stream online. The approach it adopts to share their story is experimental and therefore it would be erroneous to try to pin it down to a single genre. It further invokes memories, an idea of the past that suggests loss and tragedy, and yet, there is an undeniable sense of hope that comes to pervade the narrative, to dominate any apprehensions or anxieties that might have preceded it. By Prudence exhibits a sincerity of storytelling, a pathos which is hard to overlook. It is further translated magically on screen by the strong performance of its two-member cast, ensuring that the film is a successful whole with a mystic, abstract charm.

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