Return to Seoul

Everyone who meets Freddie finds her startling yet alluring. She’s 25 years old, appears outwardly Korean yet doesn’t know the language, and is soon causing exotic chaos among an ad-hoc group of new friends. Freddie’s return to Seoul is partly a half-hearted go at finding her biological parents, and partly an attempt to reinvent herself, something that she will try again and again. Return to Seoul made a big splash at Cannes 2022 and the film is much like the central performance by Park Ji-min: striking, distinctive, impossible to forget.

It’s totally fictional. But it’s strongly based on the life of a friend of mine, a French adoptee… After two days hanging out at [Busan Film Festival], she texted her Korean biological dad. …But in Korea they make the system very easy, as long as you have your file number. And I went along with her. So, there I was suddenly having Samgaetang [ginseng and chicken soup that Koreans associate with fertility] with the father and grandmother. I immediately felt that that’s a scene that should be in a film. …What she imagined would be a one-time holiday trip, becomes something in which we follow the character over several years.

Director Davy Chou, from an interview with Variety