{"id":549538,"date":"2026-03-20T18:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T18:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/549538\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T18:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T18:36:09","slug":"homesick-doc-film-director-interview-on-south-korea-adoptee-cphdox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/549538\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Homesick’ Doc Film Director Interview on South Korea Adoptee: CPH:DOX"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhat is family? What are home and belonging? Who gets to decide about how those concepts apply to us? And what makes a good and a bad family or home? Those are some of the questions you will find yourself thinking about and struggling with when you watch director Taekyung Tanja Inwol\u2019s (A Colombian Family) second feature documentary, Homesick (Hjems\u00f8gt). <\/p>\n

\n\tDescribed as \u201ca raw family chronicle\u201d that travels between Western Denmark and South Korea, the film about the director\u2019s family and story about being adopted from South Korea world premiered in the NORDIC:DOX\u00a0competition of the\u00a023rd edition<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0CPH:DOX<\/a>, the\u00a0Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn Taekyung\u2019s family in Denmark, everything was meant to look perfect on the surface, but behind the fa\u00e7ade, there was domestic violence, breakups, divorce, suicide attempts, death, loneliness, and much more,\u201d highlights a synopsis for the film. \u201cWhen one\u2019s origins have been erased in Korea, where does one turn when the family one has been placed in begins to crack?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHomesick dives into all that, plus the news from June 2025 that the filmmaker\u2019s adoption case was among just 56 cases in which the Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission found violations of human rights. In fact, it concluded that her documents were falsified to make her appear to be a foundling and thus more quickly adoptable for profit. However, these findings have not helped her gain access to real information about her birth parents or any concrete action from either the Korean or Danish state.<\/p>\n

\n\tInterviews, photographs, landscapes, and voice-overs help the director assemble her experience as the only adoptee in a Danish family and \u201cas someone who has been erased from Korea her entire life,\u201d the press notes for the doc highlight. \u201cThe film weaves together personal memories and imagination with the political realities of a transnational adoption system that long ago lost its shine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe producers are Rikke Tambo Andersen<\/a>, Sona Jo and Virpi Suutari. The cinematographers are
Catherine Pattinama Coleman and Mathias D\u00f8cker, with editing handled by Matilda Henningsson. Impronta Film is handling sales on the Tambo Film production.<\/p>\n

\n\tInwol explains her motivation to make Homesick this way: \u201cI have, as a child, had more families than most, belonged to many and nowhere at all \u2014 but the premise for them all was that someone had the power to decide where and to whom I was allowed to belong.\u201d And she adds: \u201cBy what parameters can one even\u00a0determine\u00a0whether one family is better than another?\u00a0The childless couple in the West Danish town of Varde had more right to a child than the single mother in the Korean port city of Incheon. Not just any child \u2014 but the child she had given birth to.\u00a0In this way, a child born in Korea grew up in Denmark.\u00a0Isn\u2019t\u00a0it strange that the child grows up in a random family on the other side of the world \u2014 and no one talks about it.\u201d Silence, after all, can be more painful than harmful words. <\/p>\n

\n\tWatch the trailer for Homesick here.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tInwol started thinking about making a film when her parents died to process how she felt and the questions she struggled with. \u201cYou know this whole thing about rest in peace?\u201d she shares with THR. \u201cPeople have this idea: let\u2019s not speak ill of the dead. But I was like: \u2018No, now\u2019s the time to talk about all the stuff that we couldn\u2019t talk about before.\u2019 It was too difficult when they were alive. Nobody seemed to really agree with me, but I just had all these questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHer initial focus wasn\u2019t on herself. \u201cThe idea was to make a film about all the things that we don\u2019t talk about in the family,\u201d she explains. \u201cI wanted to create a visual language for the things for which a language doesn\u2019t exist. Interestingly, when I started interviewing the family, I realized that I was part of the secrets. So, I thought, okay, well, I guess it will have to be a film about me, or at least from my position in the family, as being one who we don\u2019t talk about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn other words: \u201cI just felt an urge to try and heal myself in some way, which then turned into this huge project, which wasn\u2019t the original intention.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHomesick actually is a more personal exploration of themes that already featured heavily in Inwol\u2019s first feature, A Colombian Family, about a mother and daughter in Colombia looking to heal their relationship. \u201cYou can see a trend here,\u201d quips Inwol. \u201cI realized that the reason why I made that film was so that I could mirror myself in their relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Homesick,\u2019 courtesy of Jacob Kang<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, how tricky was it to be both director and subject in Homesick? \u201cIt was never my wish to be a protagonist in my own film. So, when I started out making it, it was so important for me to have control over how I was presented and what people were allowed to see,\u201d Inwol tells THR. \u201cBeing the filmmaker and the protagonist gives me all the control, but I needed to make a whole bunch of rules for myself and how I wanted to be seen. How do I keep control of the narrative, and how do I present the world through my gaze?\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThere were some particular challenges the filmmaker foresaw. \u201cThere is just no language for difference, and so I had to [think about] how to give myself that language,\u201d she recalls. \u201cAnd I am also very aware that the audience is not necessarily on my side, because I\u2019m the minority in the story. So, how do I turn the gaze around? It means I had to make up a gaze. They have never seen my gaze on them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOne recurring visual element is footage of Inwol standing next to other people, who don\u2019t immediately get identified, in a set-up that will remind audiences of family photos. \u201cI call them moving portraits,\u201d Inwol explains. \u201cBecause it\u2019s as if you take a portrait, but then just keep it going. This is the first moment that you get to meet these people, because these people are both family, but also somebody who I want to invite the viewer to look at. Putting myself next to them means you cannot tell from that shot alone whether it\u2019s my parents or my brother or whoever. And I think that just shows the randomness of it all. So, by introducing them in that way next to me, it gives you the idea of the randomness of my being there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Homesick,\u2019 courtesy of Mathias D\u00f8cker<\/p>\n

\n\tHomesick also has more performative scenes in Korea, in which Inwol and friends wear a hanbok, the traditional Korean clothing. \u201cThe other three women that I walk with are also adopted from Korea to Denmark,\u201d Inwol explains. \u201cAnd the idea for me was to show that I\u2019m not alone, although the core feeling in the film is loneliness and not being seen or recognized.\u201d But the footage of the women together \u201ccreates a sense of community,\u201d with the hanbok symbolizing resilience and resistance, even though Korea is \u201ca nation suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat\u2019s next for Inwol? \u201cThere\u2019s a red thread through my films, and that is the theme of family divided by conflict or war or diaspora experiences,\u201d she highlights. \u201cI\u2019m in really early development on a film about a Korean community in Mexico. It is one of the oldest communities of Koreans. For me, it would be nice because it touches on themes I know. I constantly ask myself, \u2018What films can I make? What films are for me?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What is family? What are home and belonging? Who gets to decide about how those concepts apply to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,200933,75,77,337],"class_list":["post-549538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cphdox","tag-entertainment","tag-international","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}