My Mother’s Story
2023 · South Korea
Directed by Kim So-young
Genres: animation, drama, historical
Tones: melancholic, tender
A daughter listens as her elderly mother Notsae recounts intimate memories spanning Korean history — from the Japanese colonial era and the Korean War to longing for a divided homeland — and decides to immortalize her mother’s life in a comic book.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Mother-daughter conversation spanning Japanese colonization to Korean War with a recurring bird-crossing-borders motif, comic-within-the-film device — BISFF opening film is a real placement. The premise is generational-epic-in-miniature and that compression usually works. Yes.
A daughter-listening structure embedding a comic-book device with bird-crossing-border iconography is a sophisticated way to handle Korean colonial-and-war history at family scale. Without runtime listed, harder to judge, but a Busan opening film carries weight.
BISFF 2024 Opening Film — mother-daughter conversation structuring a generational epic from Japanese colonial era through Korean War, with a comic-book-within-the-film device and a bird-crossing-borders motif. Festival-opening pedigree at Busan Shorts is a real signal; co-direction by Jang Min-hee is the bigger detail than the trailer shows.
Reviews
An impressive South Korean animation
Festivals
- Busan International Short Film Festival 2024