Main programme  

Young-Chan has been deaf and blind since childhood. As he puts it himself, "In the beginning there was darkness and silence, and the darkness and silence were with god. And when I arrived, they came to me." Young-Chan has no idea how to participate in the world until he meets Soon-Ho, who is disabled and as short as a little girl, and she changes his life dramatically. Being married to her, he explores the things he can neither see nor hear. By softly tapping each other's finger, they can understand one another; it is sometimes as if they are tenderly playing a piano. This documentary follows the couple in the same gentle tempo as Young-Chan moves through his life. We see them replacing a lightbulb together, receiving friends, working on a theatre piece, reading a book, and gliding down a mountain on a sleigh. Touching the bark of a tree, running his hand through sand, or brushing raindrops on a window pane with his fingertips he explores the beauty of this world.  They cannot, however, stay together forever. Young-Chan begins to learn to walk with a blind stick, precariously for the first time in 40 years, while Soon-Ho stays home, alone for the first time in their marriage.

Festivals and Awards

Amsterdam Documentary Film Festival, 2011 – Award for the Best Feature-Length Documentary
Silverdocs Documentary Film Festival, USA, 2012 – Sterling Award for the Best World Feature
Tribeca Film Festival, USA, 2012

Seung-jun Yi

He started his career as a documentary filmmaker in 1999 and since then has won several prizes in film festivals in Korea, including the 20th Korean producers & directors' association award for Like wild flower - Two women's story (2007). His main interest as a documentary director is to discover something new, interesting, sad and valuable in the everyday lives of human beings which is not easily seen, that is, to show “another world” of “this world”.

Filmography

Breathing, In a Wasteland (2002)
Like Wild Flower - Two Women's Story (2007)
Children of God (2008)