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Der bittere Apfel vom Stamm (The bitter apple from the tree)

Special mention of the jury.
“Through the portrait of her mother, Anna kim draws in an extremely mastered way the caracteristics of the South Korean culture. We want to congratulate her for taking the risk of facing such intimate and delicate captations by finding the right angle and also the right distance. The tempo of her editing and the sensivity of her compositions made us dive into a very distinguished and poetic universe in which she expresses her most profound feelings in a reachable way.”
Hana Kim
30' / 2015 / Germany, Republic of Korea
Korean
English and spanish subtitled

Audience vote 4.77

2013, Summer in Southkorea
I went back to my homeland Seoul, in the Metropolitan City Incheon. I have also visited the homeland of my mother (Gyodong), on the border of North Korea.
I have chosen my mother as the protagonist and observed her as a woman. At the same time, I had filmed her up close and person, in my role as the daughter. Driven by my “mother complex” and accompanied by the video camera.
The film shows the modernization of Korea from my personal perspective. The city is astonishing, it is full of hopes, it gives lots of expectations, unrealistic dreams for everyone.
The storytelling in this film is associative. I have at the same time partly played with the Idea of Anagram. I have connected the pictures and meanings indirectly with each other. Similar like in laying out tarot cards.
The narration was developed through the combination of symbols and its interpretation and swapping of pictures. A poetic language, one looks a woman in the system of the society, and how she lives.

Main Festivals & Awards

Premios / Awards :
HFBK The Hamburg Cultural Foundation, Germany, 2015
 / 7. Charlotte Film Festival New York (USA) : Best Documentary Short Film / 4. Family Film Project, Portugal : 1. Prize.
Festivales / Festivals: 61' International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany / 5. Koreanische Filmtage Hamburg, Germany / 7. Charlotte Film Festival, NC USA / 2015 Astra International documentary Film Festival, Sibiu Romania / 13. Asiana International short Film Festival IC, Seoul Southkorea / 57. Lübeck Filmtage
 / 4. Family Film Project, Portugal / 2016 Transmediale/art&digitalculture / 13. Tartu World Film Festival, Estonia / 13. dokumentarfilmwoche Hamburg, Germany.

Director's Biography

Hana Kim was born in Incheon, South Korea. She got her bachelor’s degree in film from Hamburg’s HfbK film school in 2014, before going on to do a master’s with Professor Robert Bramkamp. “The Bitter Apple from the Tree” won the HfbK film prize in 2015.