Movies
A personal film where director Cho Jinseok documents his search for his biological mothers. It's not a run-of-the-mill documentary with talking heads and a forced narrative, but a mood piece that is part poem, part letter addressed to his unknown mother, and part detective story. The story takes us from Japan to Lisboa and all the way back to South Korea. These three segments have an individual identity, though stylistically they are still consistent. It's just different ways of using the same stylistic choices to differentiate the three parts. My favorite was the Japanese section, the Lisboa section was a slight step back, but the film still managed to end strong with the South Korean segment. This is slow cinema in documentary form, so don't expect anything overtly entertaining or amusing. The pacing is slow, the cinematography is moody, and the intertitles spelling out the letter throughout the film are touching. It's the soundtrack that made the biggest difference for me though. Love (dark) ambient and illbient that sets the tone like no other. If more documentaries were like this, I'd a way more eager to dig into the genre.Read all