“You Can’t Thrive Alone”: Jeju Women’s Film Festival brings 29 films to the screen after beating 460-to-1 odds

A screen for solidarity and coexistence: “You Can’t Thrive Alone”

“The 27th Jeju Women’s Film Festival” will open at Lotte Cinema’s Jeju Yeondong branch for four days, from the 15th through the 18th, under the slogan “You Can’t Thrive Alone.” In an era when the climate crisis intersects with inequality, weighty stories exploring “solidarity” with others and minorities will meet audiences.

This year’s opening film is director Yoo So-young’s documentary “Gongsuni.” Told through a daughter’s eyes, the film calmly records the life of a mother known as Gongsuni who lived as a cog in the machinery of her era. It revisits the mother’s real name, which the director had long overlooked, and the value of dignified “women’s labor,” leaving a deep impression.

The festival will screen 29 diverse films across 19 screenings, led by the opening film and including “Management and Disposal Plan: Miari Texas Edition,” “An Ideal Family,” “Lost Words,” “The Red-Brick House Across from the Blue House,” and “Can I Get Witness?” In particular, the “Yomangjin Winning Films” section, a short-film competition that serves as a gateway for emerging women creators, will showcase nine sharp perspectives that made it through fierce competition among 460 entries.

The festival has also prepared a rich lineup of opportunities to extend the films’ afterglow. Conversations with audiences involving 22 teams, including film directors, women’s studies scholars and environmental experts, will continue alongside special talks and audience discussion groups, deepening the debate throughout the festival.

Closing the festival will be “Daughters of the Sea,” a documentary by Spanish director Gema Gonzalez Martinez. The film interweaves the awe-inspiring “rhythms of life” of Jeju’s haenyeo divers and Spanish women who weave fishing nets, showing how they live in harmony with nature despite the geographical distance between them.

Programmer Go Eun-young said the festival had “carefully selected films that emphasize narratives of solidarity with minorities amid overlapping crises,” explaining the thinking behind this year’s program. The Jeju Women’s Film Festival, organized by the “Jeju Women’s Association,” which began in 2000 with the goal of building a gender-equal Jeju society, will once again serve as a channel for raising the questions of its time. Support passes can be purchased through Naver online reservations (https://booking.naver.com/booking/12/bizes/755086) or at the venue.