The Cambodian-French director Davy Shu brings to light the film Back to Seoul, a story about a Korean girl adopted by a French family when she was an infant. Released in Russia, the movie invites more than a simple family melodrama. It hints at a deeper journey—a reunion that reaches beyond sentiment to touch questions about identity, memory, and belonging.
The film centers on a traditional Korean family structure that is strict and clearly stratified. That gravity sits alongside a modern landscape where historical and political realities challenge the plot’s emotional frame. The narrative asks a puzzling question: why would a Korean child be placed with a French family when there were still parents, jobs, a home, and a grandmother in Korea? The child ends up in France through a system that matched babies with adoptive parents from abroad.
For decades, the Korean peninsula has been described in stark terms: North Korea as a realm of poverty and coercion, South Korea as a beacon of technology, democracy, and economic growth. The film touches on a broader history behind those labels, a history tied to real events and long-running social debates.
Powerful figures and moments from South Korea’s past surface here. Some leaders faced corruption charges, and Park Chung-hee, once hailed for economic progress, was assassinated amid questions about governance and democracy. The film situates these facts within a larger story of migration, family, and the costs of seeking a better life abroad.
From the 1960s onward, South Korea became a key source of babies adopted by Western families grappling with their own fertility issues. Many children came from places where their birth families hoped life would be safer, more stable, and more nourished than what could be offered locally. The film notes a spectrum of motivations behind these adoptions, including economic strain and the dream of opportunity, while acknowledging that not all journeys were simple or free from pain. A single document cited in the movie mentions 221,000 babies moving to the West, a figure that anchors a broader, unsettling historical thread.
What begins as a family story gradually exposes a larger tragedy. The line between drama and tragedy becomes sharper as the consequences unfold. In tragedy, the flow of events is altered in ways that foreclose normal futures. The film’s protagonist ends up in Seoul, returning to a sense of Korean roots while finding himself unable to fully speak the language or connect with his birth family. The family gathers with care, apologizing and urging him to stay in Korea, to marry a local partner, and to learn the language. Yet the boy’s recollection confronts him with the truth that some choices have left lasting scars. He acknowledges the past, even as the future remains uncertain, and a weight settles over the scene that cannot be easily moved.
As the story unfolds, the hero navigates two identities—Korean and French—without feeling at home in either. He is offered prosperity and stability in a world that seems to pull him in different directions. The tension grows as his ties with his adoptive family loosen, and the sense of homelessness hardens into a persistent restlessness. What was meant to be a stable life in France feels distant, and a future rooted in Korea appears out of reach. The film traces how belonging can feel both near and far at the same time.
In the end, the character tries to find a place to belong, moving through scenes of waking, talking, and yearning. He experiences moments of connection—shared tears, awkward reunions, and a search for a language that can bind people who were once separate by a world of borders. Yet the resolution remains elusive. There are moments of tenderness, but those moments do not erase an enduring sense of displacement. The film closes on a note that suggests a world where origin and home are not easily reconciled, where the heart can hold multiple ancestries without settling into a single place. The experience becomes less about finding a fixed home and more about living with a spectrum of roots that never fully align.
The work presents a personal perspective that may not reflect every editorial stance, inviting viewers to consider how memory shapes identity and how choice meets consequence in the lives of those who move between cultures.