THE LAND OF MORNING CALM
Synopsis
A young fisherman goes missing. The complicit captain falsely reports his fall, leaving his Vietnamese wife in shock and his mother in relentless search. No body surfaces. Villagers eye the wife’s impending insurance payout. The fisherman had planned to escape with his mother to his wife’s hometown using this money. But the payout requires giving up the search. His mother, unable to let go, ties him to the sea he wished to escape. The captain, once well-intentioned, grows frustrated. With the same temper that ruined his daughter, he decides to end it all.
Director's biography
Park Ri-woong (born in 1978) is a South Korean film director and screenwriter. He graduated in Directing from the Korea National University of Arts. His works often explore the hidden layers of family and social relationships, marked by a subtle narrative style and strong cinematic sensibility. The Land of Morning Calm is his debut feature film, following several short films that were screened at international film festivals, including Let Us Go (Seoul International Film Festival, Seoul Eco Film Festival, Third Eye Asian Film Festival, 2008). The film premiered in the New Currents section at the Busan International Film Festival 2024, where it won the Audience Award and the NETPAC Award, then went on to win the Golden Wheel Award for Best Film at the Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema 2025. Prior to this, Park gained attention with The Girl on a Bulldozer, which was invited to numerous prestigious festivals such as the New York Asian Film Festival, Osaka Asian Film Festival, Florence Korea Film Fest, Frankfurt Korean Film Festival, Kaohsiung Film Festival, PyeongChang International Peace Film Festival, Nancy International Film Festival, and the Busan International Film Festival 2021.