
Soup and Ideology
★ 9 · 2022 · 118m · Documentary
Confronting half of her mother’s life—her mother who had survived the Jeju April 3 Incident—the director tries to scoop out disappearing memories. A tale of family, which carries on from Dear Pyongyang, carving out the cruelty of history, and questioning the precarious existence of the nation-state.
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