39th edition 2024 feature films
Softshell
Jinho Myung
Following the death of their mother, a Thai-American brother and sister navigate living in the city and beyond, and face a series of unexpected revelations.
Jinho Myung grew up in the Los Angeles area and attended NYU Tisch School of the Arts. After a number of small-scale short films, his debut feature film Softshell premiered at the New/Next Film Festival in Baltimore.
A word from the selection committee:
Jinho Myung is the enfant terrible of the Safdie Brothers and Andrew Bujalski. Although he knows what he owes his famous forebears - even referencing Josh Safdie’s The Pleasure of Being Robbed in one of the scenes -, he enjoys toying with this legacy even more. The tokens of 2000s New-York indie films and Mumblecore are immediately manifest: the saturated grain of 16mm film, jostling handheld camera movements (operated by Rhys Scarabosio, a collaborator of Sean Price Williams) striving to follow the protagonists thrown into the city like pinballs beads. However, in Softshells, New York offers new perspectives and opens up a world different from the one its predecessors had accustomed viewers. By featuring Thai-American brother-sister as the main characters, the filmmaker - himself of Korean descent - shines a light on another world, rarely shown in American indie films.
What will this brother-sister duo - with their great rapport portrayed by Caledonia Abbey and Legyaan Thapa - come up against, no-one can predict: in just a few frames, they are shot from a game centre to a Buddhist temple in Queens, gingerly bouncing through town. Yet, biting melancholy bursts through the gentle shell of Jinho Myung’s characters.
― Paola Raiman
- Interprétation
-
Legyaan THAPA, Caledonia ABBEY, Heen SASITHORN
- Scénario
- Jinho MYUNG
- Photographie
- Rhys SCARABOSIO
- Son
- Jinho MYUNG
- Montage
- Jinho MYUNG
- Musique
- Nick McCLURG
- Décors
- Jinho MYUNG, Alaine FARIN
- Production
- Jinho MYUNG, Rory PFOTENHAUER, Alaine FARIN
CONTACT :
Jinho MYUNG
jinhomyung00@gmail.com