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Film Archive

Sisters on the Road

Forum of Independents - Competition 2009 / Jee-geum E-dae-ro-ga Jo-a-yo / South Korea 2008

After their mother’s funeral, a young sophisticated yuppie sets out with her older, earthy sister to find the father she never knew. The classic road movie here blossoms into a surprisingly complex and original work in which it is unimportant where the journey leads the heroines, but rather how it changes them internally.

Sisters on the Road

Synopsis

Two sisters who’ve long been separated meet up once again at their mother’s funeral. They are opposites in character due, among other things, to having different fathers. Older, earthy Myung-ju is a single mother who works at a fish market and lives at her mother’s house with her aunt. Younger, sophisticated Myung-eun long ago severed ties to the family, and she now lives a yuppie life in the city. The funeral, however, reawakens the impulse to seek out her father. She has an address on an old envelope to aid her in her quest, not to mention her sister, who remembers Myung-eun’s father from the time he lived with their mother. One of the most mature South Korean debuts of recent years expands the concept of the road movie into a journey during which it doesn’t matter where the characters physically go, but rather how they change internally. The movie’s original, precisely constructed screenplay is refreshing in its artful use of a melodramatic frame in order to depict the elusive situation hidden under its generic surface.

About the film

90 min / Color, 35 mm
International premiere

Director Boo Ji-young / Screenplay Boo Ji-young / Dir. of Photography Kim Dong-eun / Music Choi Seung-hyun / Editor Kim Soo-jin / Producer Yoo Seung-young / Production DNA Productions Co. Ltd. / Cast Kong Hyo-jin, Shin Mina, Kim Sang-hyun / Contact Indiestory Inc.

About the director

Boo Ji-young

Boo Ji-young (b. 1971, South Korea) graduated in educational psychology from Korea’s prestigious Ewha Women’s University in Seoul, as well as from the Korean Academy of Film Arts. She made her first short movie, Spark, in 1997. In 2000-2001 she shot a trio of short DV/16 mm films, which were screened at a number of domestic festivals. Her fourth short film, A Drop of Clear Salty Liquid (Nunmul, 2002), took the Special Prize at the Daegu Independent Short Film Festival. Sisters on the Road is her debut feature.

Contacts

Indiestory Inc.
2FL Woosung Bldg., 70 Kyonggidae-ro, Seodaemun-gu, 03736, Seoul
Republic of Korea
Phone: +82 274 36 051, +82 274 360 53
E-mail: [email protected]

Guests

Boo Ji-young
Film Director, Film Director

Mina Shin
Actress

Park Soon-hong
Producer

Kim Ok-hyun

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