Han
2017 · 20m · Singapore / South Korea
Directed by Jonathan Choo
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
After his son flees from a fatal road accident, a guilt-ridden father takes it upon himself to right his son's undoing, embarking on a sobering journey of atonement to Korea to meet the victim's parents.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a festival-circuit grief film playing it remarkably straight — the conceptual heavy lifting (han, borders, atonement) never disrupts the emotional machinery, which makes it competent but safe, the kind of thing that gets programmed precisely because nobody will argue against it.
Choo's formal restraint here is the thing — how the film lets geography and language become the actual medium of atonement rather than plot devices, and how it situates itself deliberately within East Asian art cinema's lineage of familial reckoning, the kind of considered distance that earns its tenderness.
The real move is the choice to keep the father's face obscured or turned away through much of the second act, refusing the cathartic close-up; it forces you into the victim's parents' perspective and makes their silence heavier than any dialogue could, a structural decision that does everything on a modest budget.
Reviews
Won Best Direction at the National Youth Film Awards — the film did much good for me because it was sent to NYFA and won Best Director, which was a huge encouragement.
Festivals
- National Youth Film Awards (Singapore) 2016, Best Direction
- Camerimage 2017
- Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia 2017
- Cleveland International Film Festival 2017
- Tokyo Short Shorts Film Festival 2017
- Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival 2017