Treeless Mountain

Director: So Yong Kim So Yong Kim

Overview

The frozen space in a little girl's heart gradually begins to warm thanks to the love of her older sister in director So Yong Kim's portrait of a young innocent forced to come to terms with feelings of loss and abandonment. Six-year-old Jin (Hee Yeon Kim) and her younger sister, Bin (Song Hee Kim), live in a cramped apartment with their single mother. Though their lives are on the edge of disaster, both girls remain completely oblivious to the threats of the outside world. One morning, after Jin wets the bed, their mother packs up all their belongings and sends the girls to live with their alcoholic Big Aunt (Kim Mi-hyang). Suddenly thrust into a hostile and unfamiliar environment, the girls are given a piggy bank and a promise that their mother will return when it's finally been filled. Wrestling with feelings of abandonment despite the fact that she's not mature enough to understand why their mother has left or what may become of her and Bin in the future, Jin showers her younger sibling with affection in order to prevent her from feeling as if all hope has been lost.

Product Details

Release Date:	09/15/2009
UPC:	0896602002098
Original Release:	2008
Rating:	NR
Source:	Oscilloscope
Region Code:	A
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	1:29:00
Sales rank:	59,576

Special Features

Deleted Scenes and Outtakes; Audio Commentary with Director So Yong Kim and Producer Bradley Rust Gray; Post-Screening Q&A with So Yong Kim at New York's Film Forum; Interview with Child Actors Kim Hee Yeon and Kim Song Hee at the 16th Annual Altin Koza Film Festival in Adana, Turkey

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Hee Yeon Kim	Jin,Bin
Kim Mi-hyang	Big Auntie
Kim Hee Yeon	Jin
Kim Song Hee	Bin
Lee Soo Ah	Mom
Boon Tak Park	Grandma
Mi Hyang Kim	Actor
Eric Offin	Composer
Asobi Seksu	Composer

Technical Credits

So Yong Kim

So Yong Kim	Director,Screenwriter,Producer
Bradley Rust Gray	Producer
Jay van Hoy	Producer
Ben Howe	Producer
Lars Knudsen	Producer
Jamie Mai	Executive Producer
Charlie Ledley	Executive Producer
Ian McGloin	Executive Producer
Eric Offin	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

So Yong Kim's Treeless Mountain starts out on a sad note, as a mother (Soo Ah Lee) is forced to all but abandon her children, Jin (Hee Yeon Kim) and Bin (Song Hee Kim), to their uncaring aunt (Mi Hyang Kim). But something magical happens, for the audience watching as well as the children: what should be a near-tragic set of circumstances in the lives of these two girls instead becomes a lyrical and seductive look at childhood resiliency. Kim's camera and script bring us inside the world of these two girls, in all of their innocence and optimism, which survives even in the face of their mother's failure to reappear, and their aunt's eventual decision to pass the children along to their grandparents. The filmmaker conveys all of this through a thoroughly naturalistic approach to the two girls' portrayals, never telling us too much more than we need to know, or much more than the children themselves should (or could) know. One even starts to react to the adults around them from the point-of-view of the children, in sympathetic terms -- even the neglectful aunt -- and overcome our own, more experienced view of the world. Watching Treeless Mountain is one of the finest cinematic examples in recent years of the willing suspension of disbelief -- Kim's vision is beguilingly lyrical and very quiet, but never uninvolving; this is a movie where the smallest nuance demands attention. Indeed, the movie is thoroughly engrossing from the opening frame to the end credits, and it's a beautiful viewing experience.