The Return
회귀

  • Cast

    Karoline Sofie Lee, Thomas Hwan, Seong In-ja

  • Release Date

    2018

  • Runtime

    84 mins

  • Cert

    12

Karoline (Karoline Sofie Lee) visits South Korea for the first time since her adoption by a Danish family as a baby. Whilst staying in a guesthouse in Seoul, she meets other adoptees from Europe and the US who are there with a similar quest – to search for their birth families. Despite their different upbringings, what they seem to have in common is that they are each seeking to better grasp their ‘origin’, or at least allow themselves time to contemplate the issue of their identity.

This film is a hybrid, blurring fact and fiction with both scripted and documentary elements. It draws from the director Malene Choi’s own experience as an adoptee and features two lead actors who are adoptees themselves. The power of the film lies in the fact that many of Karoline’s encounters and interactions in the guesthouse are captured for real. We are allowed to follow the emotional journey of the characters up-close, witnessing their everyday reality interspersed with carefully dramatised situations.