Crowdified! This project has been successfully funded on 01. May 2021. Thanks to the 131 boosters that made it possible!

Unfamiliar, Familiar

a short film by Hae-Sup Sin

Hae-Sup Sin Glattbrugg, CH

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Project Overview

"Unfamiliar, Familiar" is an independent short film by Swiss director Hae-Sup Sin. It deals with the existential question of what "home" means. The self-produced film will be shot entirely in South Korea, with a professional Korean cast & crew.

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128%

19.206 CHF

of 15.000 CHF

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About UNFAMILIAR, FAMILIAR

SANGHWA (50), a Swiss-Korean, flies to Korea in the midst of the pandemic after receiving news of her mother's death. Due to the measures, she spends her obligatory quarantine in the abandoned parental home. While Sanghwa struggles to come to terms with her mother's death, her brother SANGUK (44) wants to sell the house as soon as possible. - Unfamiliar, Familiar is a fictional short film project by Hae-Sup Sin.

In Korean culture, family comes first. Many Korean women living abroad kind of feel the guilt of never having been there for their family back home. After many years, they have changed and adapted to the Western world. Their former home country suddenly seems foreign and the fear of no longer having a real home unsettles them - an issue that affects many in our multicultural society. Add to this the global crisis in which people are no longer allowed to travel to other countries without restrictions and have to "stay at home". What defines a home? With this film, I would like to encourage the viewer to think about this.

Motivation

As a Swiss film maker with Korean backgrounds, stories from my environment and the confrontation with my cultural identity have always influenced me. After studying film at the Zurich University of the Arts, I spent some time looking for an idea for my next project and found what I was looking for in my circle of acquaintances. Inspired by my mother and other Korean women who have lived in Switzerland for many years, I came up with the basic idea for Unfamiliar, Familiar.

I won the "Treatment Award" at the Zug Film Festival with the film concept. In close collaboration with the Korean author Ji-Hyun Shin, it was then adapted into a screenplay. Since December 2020, I have been staying in Seoul and preparing this project.

But for an international project to be shot in South Korea - in the middle of the Corona crisis - I needed a lot of courage and good contacts. I have them thanks to my cinematographer Kyeong-Yeob Choo. I've known him since I was 14 years old and he's like my cinematic mentor. So our first project together is very significant and the start of what I hope will be a long-lasting collaboration.

Thanks to his experience, Choo has a wide network of professional filmmakers and actors in the Korean film industry. With his help, I was able to form a team of passionate filmmakers who want to get something going together in these difficult times. The shoot will take place in April 2021.

Why WE need YOUR help

Unfamiliar, Familiar is a passion project that would be difficult to finance within a short period of time through the usual funding structures. However, a certain budget is needed for catering, transport costs, crew and actors' fees, rental costs for the filming locations and material costs. To cover most of these costs, we depend on your generous help. The bigger our budget, the better quality we can guarantee.

Although I am directing the project, for me it is a film that is not made by me alone. Everyone involved, whether as cast & crew or as supporters, contributes their share and thus helps develop this film.

Thank you very much for your support!