full title
A BRAND NEW LIFE (2009)
  • Director Ounie LECOMTE
    Year 2009
    Status Completed
    Genre drama
    Starring KIM Saeron, PARK Doyeon, KO A-Sung
    Running Time 92 min.
    Country of Production Korea, France
    Festival & Awards 2009 Cannes Film Festival - Out of Competition
    2009 Toronto International Film Festival - Discovery
    2009 Tokyo International Film Festival - Asian Film Award
    2009 Cinekid Festival - Cinekid Lion Jury Award
    2010 Berlin International Film Festival - Generation-Kplus
    2010 Hong Kong International Film Festival - Global Vision
    Synopsis 1975. It's early autumn, somewhere in a small town in South Korea. Jinhee is 9. She sets off on a journey. She doesn't know where she is going. But she has to follow. She has to obey. Near by Seoul, her father entrusts her to an orphanage for girls run by Catholic nuns in the hope that she will be adopted. Jinhee resists. She cannot believe that this father whom she loves so much has abandoned her. She tries to make him come back. She attempts to run away. In vain, she finally accepts her fate, forced to hope and wait for her possible adoption.

    Jinhee gets used to life in the orphanage. Sookhee, a girl three years her senior, leads her off in her carefree games and tricks. Then there's Yeshin, 17, the oldest of the girls there, handicapped by a deformed hip. Fate has brought them together, but for how long and what does it have in store for them? Not everyone will be lucky enough to find a family. Deep down Jinhee doesn't want to leave and holds onto the hope of seeing her father again.

    Her time at the orphanage will be one of multiple and permanent separations, of barely forged bonds destined to be shattered. Isn't that a little like experiencing death? And, at the journey's end, there will be the promise, perhaps of a new life, of a brand new life.
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