Film Festival 09 - Treeless Mountain
Treeless Mountain
USA/South Korea 2008, 89m
Director: So Yong Kim
Festivals: Toronto, Pusan 2008; Berlin, New Directors/New Films
2009
Using a breathlessly attentive telephoto lens that her tiny
subjects seem never to have noticed, American-Korean director So
Yong Kim (In Between Days) draws us uncannily closely into the
imaginative worlds of two little Korean girls, aged six and four.
When their mother is evicted from their city apartment and heads
away to track down their father, Jin and little Bin are deposited
with a series of less citified relations. With a tender, observant
eye for their interaction, Kim shows us the stories the sisters
invent and inhabit together as they adapt to repeated abandonment
and constant changes in their circumstances. What could easily play
for pathos is instead an eloquently cinematic appreciation of
children's capacity to deal with the mystery of adult behaviour. -
BG. "No director working today captures girlhood better than So
Yong Kim&Treeless Mountain is simply one of the best films
about childhood ever made." - Melissa Anderson, Village Voice
In Korean with English subtitles
