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Return to Seoul

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Wikipedia article




'Return to Seoul' or 'All The People Ill Never Be' is a 2022 drama film directed and written by Davy Chou. A French-German-Belgian coproduction, the film revolves around Freddie (Ji-Min Park), a 25-year old French adoptee, who goes to South Korea to find her biological family. The film premiered on 22 May at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival under the 'Un Certain Regard' section.

Premise



"The pic centers on 25-year-old Freddie, who impulsively 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."

Cast



Production



Director Davy Chou got the idea for the film from a similar experience with his friend, also a French woman in her 20s adopted from South Korean biological parents, who traveled with him to South Korea during the filming of his 2011 film 'Golden Slumbers' to meet her biological father and grandmother for the first time. Seeing how emotional their meeting was, he decided to make a film on similar lines. Not knowledgeable in Korean culture or the experience of adoption at first, he researched these elements by talking to his friend and other adoptees as well as reading books, identifying some similarities with his own life as the son of immigrants from Cambodia who had left the country before the Khmer Rouge took over. Chou met Ji-Min Park through a "personal introduction" and decided to cast her as Freddie, her first film role, as he saw her as someone who "shared the essence of Freddies free-spiritedness". He further developed her characterization through conversations with Park, which "challenged some of his notions as a male director and helped him understand how a young French woman might respond to aspects of Koreas highly patriarchal society." Filming took place over six weeks in late 2021 in South Korea and Romania.

Release



The film was first shown at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival on 22 May under the English title 'All The People Ill Never Be' in the 'Un Certain Regard' section. Shortly before it was shown, MUBI and Sony Pictures Classics acquired the distribution rights to the film in different regions, with Sony Pictures Classics changing the film's English title to 'Return to Seoul'.

References




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