Director Song Dong-yoon’s Original Novel ‘Born May 18’ Gets a Film Adaptation—First Poster Revealed!

Ahead of its May release, the film adaptation of director Song Dong-yoon’s novel 〈Born May 18〉 has unveiled its first poster. After the screening held on March 27 (Friday) at 7:00 PM at CGV Guri, the film tells the story of three people bound by sorrowful ties: a woman who lives by erasing memories, a woman trying to find them, and a man whose memories have come to a stop.

The first poster shows “Seo-yeon Lee (Song Yeon),” who has left behind the keepsakes of a diary and a recording tape; the novelist “Misu (Nam So-yeon)”; and “Jung-woo Lee (Song Seung-gi),” a former paratrooper, now seated in a coma on the wheelchair she drives—each gazing into the distance at their own far-off world. Condensing the relationship of three people who carry the tragedy of May 1980 in their own different ways into a single image, the poster sparks curiosity about how these intertwined lives are connected.

In particular, the line on the poster—“I was born on May 18, and on that day my father went missing”—is the film’s central premise, foreshadowing fateful events that the three individuals will encounter as they survive while carrying the wounds of May 18. The film 〈Born May 18〉 suggests that the history of tragedy is not something confined to the past, but something that is unfolding in the present, through the process by which three people who had stayed in their past pain finally meet at a single point and come to understand and heal one another. This weighty narrative vividly reveals the era’s burden and the value of memory that the film aims to convey.

Director Song Dong-yoon, who helmed this film, was also a firsthand witness to the turbulent tides of the pro-democracy movement on May 18, 1980, in Geumnam-ro, Gwangju. To record the memories of that day, he wrote and published his novel 『Born May 18』 with the same title in 2019, and then adapted it into a film himself. The director added authenticity to the work by stating his production intent: “I wanted to tell people who erased May 18 from their memories that May 18 is not yet over.”