The 2025 Korean Independent Film Showcase titled 'HOME/LAND' presents a compelling selection of films by Korean independent directors that explore themes of migration, home, and belonging. The showcase features candid portrayals of Koreans living abroad and individuals with intersectional identities settling in Korea, offering personal and honest explorations of what it means to find a sense of home and belonging in unfamiliar places.
The documentary 'Again the Wind Blows' (또 바람이 분다) will be screened on October 9 at 7 PM. Directed by Kim Tae-il and Ju Ro-mi in 2022, this 104-minute documentary follows Ha Mun-soon, a peddler in Gwangju, and Park Bok-ja, a Chinese diner owner, who both witnessed the 5.18 Uprising and carry both pain and pride from their experiences. The film also documents the struggles of Sli and Neyap, members of a minority tribe in Cambodia who face uncertainty about their future, as well as Palestinian women Noura and Fatma who aged in refugee camps while mourning children lost to occupation. Additionally, the documentary follows Ramiza and Amela in Bosnia as they recount the precarious lives of Gypsy women facing racism, while the directors' two children grow into young adults, their family journey mirroring the women's stories of endurance.
'Life Unrehearsed' (두 사람), directed by Banpark Jieun in 2022, will screen on October 23 at 7 PM. This 80-minute documentary tells the love story of Soohyun and In-sun, who met 36 years ago at a Korean Christian Women's Association retreat in Germany when Soohyun gave In-sun flowers. Despite threats from In-sun's then-husband and the disapproval of Korean society, In-sun chose love and decided to be with Soohyun. Now in their seventies, the two women who originally came to work as nurses in a foreign country where they knew nothing of the language have lived together in Berlin for half of their lives, sharing in all the joys and sorrows of life while standing in solidarity with other foreigners like themselves.
'Daldongne 33 Up' (사당동 더하기 33), directed by Cho Uhn in 2020, will be shown on October 16 at 7 PM. This 124-minute documentary serves as an essay chronicling a sociologist's 33-year engagement with Grandma Jung's family, one of thousands of families driven out of the Sadang demolition area known as Daldongne, where sociological fieldwork began in 1986. Covering four generations of the family up to 2019, the film provides vivid testimony of how the vicious cycle of urban poverty is reproduced in various ways, extending beyond the boundaries of that single family.
The showcase will also feature a short film screening on October 30 at 7 PM, followed by a post-screening talk with director Li Hongmei. The program includes 'Pollock' (명태), a 19-minute fiction film from 2017 about Kim Su, a delivery person learning Korean while working in Korea who accidentally catches a criminal in a motorcycle accident and receives a bounty, prompting him to treat his Korean teacher and classmates to meals. The second short film, 'My Little Television' (마이 리틀 텔레비전), is a 24-minute fiction piece from 2019 following a TV producer from a broadcasting station in Yanji, China, who visits Seoul's Daerim-dong, known as Chinatown, to interview a Chinese Korean family and spends a day documenting their daily lives.
