Cecilia Kang’s fiction debut “Elder Son” (“Hijo mayor”) has been picked up by Buenos Aires-based sales company Meikincine. The film, which debuts its trailer here, will be heading to Locarno in August, set to premiere in the Filmmakers of the Present section.
The Argentinian drama – co-produced with France – portrays the migration journey of a Korean family to Argentina in search of a better life “as they find ways to mourn what has been lost along the way.”
The story sees Lila, a young Korean-Argentinian girl, navigating the contradictions of her identity and trying to find her place in the world. Her father, Antonio, arrived in Latin America 18 years earlier, deciding to bet everything on the promise of a young immigrant’s dream.
“It’s a generational epic that seeks to return to the past in order to reinvent the present,” teased the team. Kim Chang Sung, Suh Sang Bin, Anita B Queen (cast as Lila) and Yon Chul Jung star.
Kang, born in Buenos Aires, has already presented shorts “Videogames” and “Bicicletas” at Berlin and Rotterdam respectively. She has also directed feature documentaries interrogating the cultural dualism she experienced as a Korean-Argentinian in “My Last Failure” and “A Boat Departed From Me Taking Me Away.”
A few years ago, Kang decided to interview her own father and dive into the family’s past.
“We looked at old photographs, identified locations and dates as we worked through the fog of what memories are made of. A fiction mixed with elements of reality – from what one imagines of that real space and time, or what one decides to remember. ‘Elder Son’ is born of those memories. Partial and out of chronological time, delineated by the romantic trace of a man who decided not to choose the path imposed on him, to seek a different one and how the path he has taken is inescapably the start of my own,” she stated.
The film is produced by Juan Pablo Miller for Argentina’s Tarea Fina, also known for Cannes Camera d’Or winner “Las Acacias”, “Sublime,” “The Sleepwalkers” and “Natural Sciences,” which was awarded a Crystal Bear at the Berlinale.
Louise Bellicaud and Claire Charles-Gervais co-produce for France’s In Vivo Films (“Abou Leila,” “Thirst Street,” “Un Varon”). Made in association with PAN Contenidos and Incantation Films, “Elder Son” is lensed by Victoria Pereda and scored by El Asesino del Romance.
variety.com
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