These are ten docs you shouldn’t miss at the EBS International Documentary Film Festival which will take place in cinemas (Seoul) and online (EBS1 TV) from August 21 – 27, 2023.

It has been ten years since Youngsoon defected from North Korea and settled in South Korea. However, one of her two sons went missing in the North and has never been found, and her husband committed suicide in the South. Her only remaining family, Sosa, still has trouble adapting to South Korean society. Even though Youngsoon works on construction sites during the week and at a food truck on weekends with no days off for Sosa’s future, he hates his mother. He believes that she loved his big brother more, whom she left behind, and treats him like a pain in the neck. He also thinks it is his mother who brought him to the South regardless of his will only to be stigmatized as a North Korean defector. Youngsoon had been despised and discriminated against in the North because she was the daughter of a South Korean prisoner of war detained in North Korea. That’s why she has been working so hard and taking any kind of job, even if it is illegal, such as smuggling. In fact, her only hope was her exceptionally intelligent eldest son. Youngsoon keeps saying that she is trying her best for her little son, but she feels like Sosa is not her hope but rather a challenge when living in the South without the eldest son. Now, she wants to live her own life. She spent all her money and bought Sosa a lodge to make him stand on his feet since he was in his late 20s. However, in just six months, she discovers she has been swindled. (EIDF 2023)

Thirty-year-old Sisi is a World Boxing Council Asia Title champion and the mother of a three-year-old boy. Not only will she have the opportunity to fight in a potentially career-changing International Boxing Federation match, she will also be taking full-time care of her son. Sisi was born and raised in a conservative family who believe—as many do in China—that motherhood is a woman’s most important job. After her son was born, Sisi suffered severe postnatal depression. Boxing became her way out, away to show the world she existed. With her athletic career reinvigorated, Sisi is constantly dodging accusations about her life choices. Can Sisi win inside and outside of the ring? (EIDF 2023)

In the misty mountains of North Vietnam, a teenage Hmong girl walks the thin line between childhood and becoming an adult. Over a period of three years, girls in her minority are forced to lose their innocence, discover the traps of seduction and fight for their independence. (EIDF 2023)

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Dark Red Forest is an exploration of the mysterious daily life of women devoted to their faith. 20,000 Buddhist nuns live in a monastery on a snowy plateau in Tibet, China. Surrounded by harsh nature and secluded from the outside world, these women offer us a glimpse into their religious exploration of life’s biggest questions. Far away from their families, the nuns commit everything to reach a divine state, entrusting themselves to the guru and each other. (EIDF 2023)

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Hyo-jung, a mother who has been in-laws for 30 years, has lived as a full-time housewife all her life. She became the new head of the household with a job as a ‘counselor’, but it is still up to her to do housework. When the economic zone is established, Hyo-jung can come out of the room where she lived with her husband. However, for a moment, Hyo-jung becomes anxious about her husband’s constant intrusion. Will Mom ‘Hyo-jung’ have her own safe room? (EIDF 2023)

ININNAWA: An Island Calling is a story of obligation and sacrifice, told through a family dedicating their lives to providing healthcare on the remote islands of Indonesia’s Flores Sea. With an out of sight, out of mind approach failing her people, the film explores the difficulties the world’s largest archipelago faces in providing adequate health care. MIMI is a mother of two who until recently had left her first child at school in the city and together with her youngest child worked on the islands, 30 hours sea travel from South Sulawesi. Her husband HASRI also separates from his family to pursue his calling and works the neighboring islands. Family reunions are rare. As veteran nurse and Mimi’s mother RABIAH is forced into retirement, she attempts to pass the baton to her daughter, yet finds herself once more on the islands in an unofficial caretaker role, as the COVID-19 pandemic takes hold and Mimi gives birth to her 3rd child. Mimi’s challenges, her fears and anxiety, unfold on screen as she returns to work as an independent remote area nurse. But for how long can she stay strong and separate from her young family? And for how long can Rabiah resist the call of her islands? (EIDF 2023)

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Rojek encounters members of the Islamic State from all over the world, as well as their wives detained in prison-camps, who are sharing a common dream: establishing a caliphate. Confronted with the fundamentalist beliefs of the jihadists, the film attempts to trace the beginning, the rise and fall of the Islamic State (ISIS) through their personal stories. These conversations are the thread along which the documentary evolves, as it is intertwined with various sequences depicting current, post-war Syrian Kurdistan. (EIDF 2023)

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Subject explores the life-altering experience of sharing one’s life on screen through key participants of acclaimed documentaries The Staircase, Hoop Dreams, The Wolfpack, Capturing the Friedmans, and The Square. These erstwhile documentary “stars” reveal the highs and lows of their experiences as well as the everyday realities of having their lives put under a microscope. Also featuring commentary from such influential names in the doc world as Kirsten Johnson, Sam Pollard, Thom Powers and Sonya Childress, the film unpacks vital issues around the ethics and responsibility inherent in documentary filmmaking. As tens of millions of people consume documentaries in an unprecedented “golden era,” Subject urges audiences to consider the often profound impact on their participants. (EIDF 2023)

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When he was just 14, Sajid Khan Nasiri fled Afghanistan alone. After a two-year journey filled with danger and hardships – which he minutely documented on his phone camera – he arrives in Belgium to seek asylum. Intimate sequel to the prize-winning Shadow Game. He is sure that when he arrives, he’ll be able to relax, go to school and start a new life. But once in Belgium a new game begins: the mind game. An intimate documentary about the psychological pressure young refugees face. (EIDF 2023)

“I’m sure mom is banging her head against a brick wall.” My mom, Lee Yun Jeong, no longer attends church after the Sewol ferry disaster in 2014. Then, she started heading to some kind of human rights organization for migrants in Ilsan. She gets swamped as she is not only helping migrants in the community but also visiting Hwaseong Foreigner Shelter. She puts her efforts into the things that seem practically impossible, and the relationships she engages in are only for ‘giving’ but not ‘taking.’ Does she really have to do all that? (EIDF 2023)

For more information, please visit: https://www.eidf.co.kr/eng