How do you react when you return to your country of origin and find your biological parents? It is this emotional storm that the heroine of Return to Seoul by Davy Chou discovered in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival. Canceled flights while she went on vacation to Japan send this French-raised Korean girl in search of her roots.
Davy Chou, former Franco-Cambodian documentary filmmaker noticed at Critics’ Week with Diamond Island in 2016, follows the initiatory journey of this 25-year-old young woman, portrayed by Park Ji-min, who is making a remarkable debut on screen. He recounts in four eras his quest for origins between invading father and elusive mother.
Based on a true story
The director was inspired by the true story of a friend to follow eight years of chaotic journey of a protagonist whose closed face hides a powerful inner swell. “In adoption stories, you would think that meeting the biological parents heals the wound. However, in the stories that I have been able to collect, this is precisely the beginning of the problems! “, specifies the director in the press kit.
Plunging into a country from which she comes but of which she knows nothing upsets the life of the heroine, the viewer of whom apprehends the inner slump described with remarkable acuity. Return to Seoul takes the time to introduce him to the country at the same time as the young woman who will make life choices at the end of a sometimes painful but deeply necessary journey.