#449 - Davy Chou and Park Ji-Min on Return to Seoul

Published: Feb. 23, 2023, 11 a.m.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we're featuring a conversation with Davy Chou and Park Ji-Min, discussing Return to Seoul at the 60th New York Film Festival with Artistic Director Dennis Lim. Freddie (Park Ji-Min), a young French woman, finds herself spontaneously tracking down the South Korean birth parents she has never met while on vacation in Seoul. From this seemingly simple premise, Cambodian-French filmmaker Davy Chou spins an unpredictable, careering narrative that takes place over the course of several years, always staying close on the roving heels of its impetuous protagonist, who moves to her own turbulent rhythms (as does the galvanizing Park, a singular new screen presence). Chou elegantly creates probing psychological portraiture from a character whose feelings of unbelonging have kept her at an emotional distance from nearly everyone in her life; it’s an enormously moving film made with verve, sensitivity, and boundless energy. A Sony Pictures Classics release.