House of Hummingbird
Set against the backdrop of a rapidly expanding country, following numerous unsuccessful attempts at sex eploration, a young girl, whose family is falling apart and who is surrounded by people who don’t understand her, walks the challenging path to adulthood and towards an ever-changing modern-day world. A director from S. Korea delivers the most awarded debut of 2019 (25 wins so far at some of the biggest film festivals abroad).
SOUTH KOREA | 2018 | COLOR | DCP | 138΄ | KOREAN
A fourteen year-old girl grows up in a house where her parents keep fighting and her brother beats her up regularly. She lusts after a worthless boy, has an absent girlfriend and a girl from her school falls in love with her but soon forgets all about her. She’s alone, all the bad energy around her is absorbed into her calm face. Until a teacher picks up her sensitivity.
An important film in this year’s programme, crushes the trite expectation of the coming-of-age drama. With exciting calmness, necessary gentility and a wonderful stillness in the most crucial shots, we meet an exquisite creature mirroring everything about women’s position in South Korea and all the concealed senses of a teenage soul, against the historic canvas of a country that was created faster than it could take – the plot is built wonderfully around an historical fact of 1994, when the film is set. Overwhelming and hopeful. I.D.
DIRECTOR: Bora Kim
SCREENWRITER: Bora Kim
DoP: Gook-Hyun Kang
MUSIC: Matija Strniša
EDITOR: Zoe Sua Cho
PRINCIPAL CAST: Ji-Hu Park, Sae-Byuk Kim, Seung-Yeon Lee, In-Gi Jeong, Su-Yeon Park, Sang-Yeon Sohn, Seo-Yoon Park, Yoon-Seo Jeong, Hye-In Seol, Young-Seon Hyung, Hye-Yeon Kil, Yong-Beom Son
BORA KIM
South Korean director. She is a graduate of Film Arts of the University of Columbia. The film is her debut and received many awards at the festivals of Beijing, Busan, Berlin, Istanbul and Tribeca.
FILMOGRAPHY
2018 House of Hummingbird
