These are six short films you shouldn’t miss from the EBS International Documentary Festival which will take place from August 25 – 31, 2025 in South Korea.

A Pear Tree in the Star Village by Shin Yul – Korea | 2025 – 35 minutes

A kitten is adandoned at the apartment’s stray cat feeding station. ‘Yul’ who lives in an apartment, set to find how the kitten was abandoned. She follows the neighborhood stray cats over the apartment fence to an old pear orchard, where farming has been stopped for 10 years and the pear trees have fallen between the cracks. But she discovers life growing in the midst of it all, and unravels the story of the past and present of the village, ‘Star Village’ the land she now walks on. (EIDF 2025)

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A View from Home by Zhou Mingzhe – Canada | 2025 – 15 minutes

With warmth, humour, and nostalgia, A View from Home reflects on the joys and challenges of finding belonging, captured intimately through heartfelt conversations with loved ones – all unfolding against the ever-changing backdrop of a downtown Toronto park. (EIDF 2025)

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MULJIL by Yoo Youngeun – Korea | 2024 – 25 minutes

Yang Young-sam is a 77-year-old haenyeo (female diver) who has lived a life inseparable from the sea of Jeju—a bond as intimate as that between water and fish. For decades, she has carried with her stories deeper than the sea itself through her daily dives. Now, even as Alzheimer’s gradually erodes her memory, she still makes her way to the sea at daybreak each morning. Names and dates may fade, but the rhythm of her breathing underwater and the sensitivity in her fingertips remain vivid. The sea is etched into her body’s memory—it is her life, her faith, and her love. For her, diving is more than a means of making a living; it is an earnest act of holding onto her memories. (EIDF 2025)

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Paris to Pyongyang by Helen Lee – Korea, Canada | 2024 – 32 minutes

An immigrant tale, reimagined.1950s Parisian elites led by Chris Marker and Claude Lanzmann visit the newlyestablished communist state of North Korea that claims the allegiance of the filmmaker’s grandmother during the Korean War. Anautobiographical investigation of family separation, sparked by the voyage of French luminaries and their artistic output– films, photographs and published memoirs that emerged from this unique intercultural encounter. Cinéㅠroman meets diasporic essay film in this prismatic exploration of transnational identities and their dislocations. (EIDF 2025)

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The Homecoming by Cheng Chihming, Lily Huang – Taiwan | 2024 – 25 minutes

Muay Thai was introduced to Taiwan when Thai migrant laborers came here to work. Han Reng-ding, a Taiwanese who for a long time had no fixed address, joined Li-Chin muay thai at age 22 and, for the first time, found a sense of belonging as he was learning the martial art. The boxing gym’s Thai head coach, Sonsumrit, took special care of him, and the migrant Thai workers taught him everything they knew about boxing and life. They were as close as family members for six years. However, Han’s life will unfold differently due to a new plan. (EIDF 2025)

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Yeoyu and Seolbin – [Comedy] by Hwang Jeongwon, An Sangmin – Korea | 2025 – 47 minutes

The folk duo ‘Yeoyu and Seolbin’ completed their third album, Comedy, while living in Jeju. The record swept the Folk category at the Korean Music Awards and was praised as “a single album that has it all—regret and sympathy, rage and sorrow, and hope.” Exploring what it means to be alive in the face of life’s tragedies, the duo weaves a subtle yet powerful narrative through Jeju’s landscapes: an old house and its yard, a Chinese restaurant where they once worked, and the recording studio. (EIDF 2025)

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