Director Christina Yoon and Producer Jungyoon Kim On the Yearning to Find Answers to One’s Identity in ‘Motherland’

Every time that I have seen Christina Yoon’s absorbing and intelligent short film, Motherland, I couldn’t help but think of how other adopted people will bring so much of themselves to it. This is a story about being lost as you live in your own skin, and how one young woman set the plan in motion to answer questions that have plagued her her entire life. How far would you go to seek the truth about your own identity?

Leah Evans, a Korean American adoptee, travels to Korea to find her biological mother. She doesn’t speak the language, and we notice that she travels alone. Perhaps friends told her that it wasn’t worth it? Maybe they suggested that she find her on social media first before venturing around the world? For a lot of people who were raised by adoptive parents–even in the most healthy, loving situations–there will always be an itchy, nagging set of questions in the back of their minds.

As Leah gets closer and closer to answers, she discovers that people have lied and embellished the truth in order to keep people like her away. The faces of the people she confronts cannot believe that she came all this way, and Yoon infuses her film with a hum of burning tension. I saw this film at this summer’s HollyShorts Film Festival, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Loneliness pervades every frame but retains an excitement of “knowing.”

Leah isn’t asking for perfect answers, but she silently demands the respect for the right to ask questions. This gorgeously rendered film will leave you breathless.