MUBI, the global distributor, streaming service and production company, is pleased to announce that Davy Chou’s (Diamond Island) captivating story of self-discovery Return to Seoul will open theatrically in the UK and Ireland on 5th May 2023 and will be available to stream exclusively on MUBI from 7th July 2023.
Starring Oj Kwang-Rok (Oldboy) and Kim Sun-Young (Three Sisters), and introducing newcomer Park Ji-Min in the leading role, Return to Seoul received its World Premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival under the Un Certain Regard section.
On an impulse to reconnect with her origins, Freddie, 25, returns to South Korea for the first time, where she was born before being adopted and raised in France. The headstrong young woman starts looking for her biological parents in a country she knows so little about, taking her life in new and unexpected directions.
When discussing why he wanted to tell this particular story, Davy Chou said:
“I went to present my first feature-length documentary, Golden Slumbers, at the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea. A friend of mine, Laure Badufle, came with me to show me what she called “her country”. Laure was born in South Korea and was adopted in France when she was one year old. She returned to the country of her birth for the first time
when she was twenty-three and lived there for two years before going back to France. But
before we left, she warned me: “We won’t be seeing my Korean biological father”. Their first
encounter hadn’t gone well. We met up in Busan, and after two days at the festival, she said
to me: “Look, I’ve sent my father some messages. We’re meeting in Jinju tomorrow, an hour
and a half away from here. Will you come with me?” We took a bus, and I found myself having
lunch with her biological father and grandmother.”
“I found that experience very moving. In their exchanges, there was a whole mix of emotions, sadness, bitterness, incomprehension, and regrets… There was even a tragic-comical dimension because you could tell that they were incapable of understanding each other. We had brought an interpreter with us and she had a lot of difficulties translating my friend’s fits of anger and rendering them with the politeness Korean customs required. As I was profoundly moved by this situation, I decided that one day, maybe, I would make a film about it. After the release of Diamond Island, my first fiction feature film, I started thinking about it again. I talked to Laure about it and she was very keen.”
Check out the trailer below:
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