GULL

O-bok is in her early sixties and sells fish at a market in Seoul that is due for demolition. At home she prepares her daughter’s wedding, cares for her demented mother and puts up with her drinking husband. After a traders’ celebration she is raped by Gi-taek, a colleague who, as chairman of the traders’ committee, leads the resistance against redevelopment. At first she stays silent. When she does speak, she learns that her colleagues would rather cover up the incident, the police offer no help, and her family cannot handle her wound. In her debut “Gull” (South Korea 2020), Kim Mi-jo tells of a woman who comes to understand that she must carry her own anger.

The act itself stays off-screen; the film follows O-bok through heat, routine and the slow acceptance of her own anger, up to the point of readiness to fight back. “Gull” screened in 2020 at, among others, the San Sebastián Film Festival and in MoMA’s New Directors/New Films series in New York. The film was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2020.

Shown at the 2020 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2020 · Film Archive