Yoon Ga-Eun is a little-known director in France. She is one of those directors who sometimes go unnoticed but who are able to create magnificent films by their originality. Using close-ups for the most part, she likes to show us details of life through the eyes of children. This subjective camera, this point of view specific to childhood, is still very locked in a frame, driven by a desire to show the limits. The very limited space in which the young main characters evolve, reveals to us in a very flagrant way the helplessness felt at this time of our life. We are not masters of our actions. With their own eyes, they see without filter what adults no longer see. 
Yoon Ga-Eun tells us about the discovery, the unconfessed, incomprehensible feelings. Hope, utopia. The desire for a better world. A world that often does not go beyond the walls of the home or school. Here is the analysis through her two films and one of her short films, of a director like no other. At the 64th Berlin International Film Festival and following her award for her short film Sprout, director Yoon Ga-Eun told Limb Jae-un, a reporter for the Korea.net: "In 2010, I enrolled at Sogang University. My major was history and religious studies, but I joined a drama club when I was in first grade. I was involved in theatrical art for a long time. I joined the club because I was interested in cinema. I loved drama. After graduation, I taught at some private institutes for a short time, but soon returned to the theater. I was assistant director for two or three years for a play in which one of my final year students was a director. There were mechanics of the film that I could understand because I was doing theater. If I hadn't done anything in theatre, I wouldn't have understood the basic principles of cinema. I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't done dramas." (Source) This presentation of oneself directs us towards his perspective, towards the shaping of his films. Interview given in 2014, this answer materializes with these two films The world of us and The house of us.
Sprout
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMm6AXFVTyM Director and Writer: Yoon Ga-Eun Release date: October 4, 2013 Duration: 20 minutes With Kim so An (Memories of the Sword, Train To Busan, The Battleship Island…)
History, an initiatory journey
Short film about a seven-year-old girl who goes alone to buy soybean sprouts, for the commemoration of her grandfather. Impressions Little Bo-ri overhears her parents talking about soybean sprouts. "Grandpa loved this sprouted soybean, they are needed for his commemoration." Tiny, she takes her small wallet and goes in search of the market. Along the way she meets several people and sometimes situations that she avoids by intuition. She looks at life with her sparkling, innocent eyes, like a child following a butterfly and forgetting its starting point. The specter of Lady Vengeance strolls, but… No, he will look elsewhere. Fortunately, we are not in that direction at all. It would be wiser to turn our eyes away from Abbas Kiarostami's exceptional film, "Where is my friend's house?" Where it is also a question of crossing dangers to achieve a specific goal. In short, they are initiatory journeys experienced by children who leave their homes for the first time. The director will say : "As for why I wanted to make the film, after I finished the film, I thought that people would strive all the time to achieve their goal, but there are things they can't achieve, no matter how hard they try. Then I realized that it is significant, in itself, to take a step forward." (Source)
The world of us
Directed and written by Yoon Ga-eun Cinematography Min Jun-won, Kim Ji Hyun Release date February 14, 2016 (Berlin), June 16, 2016 (South Korea) Duration 94 minutes Country South Korea Distribution Choi so-in Seol Hye-in Lee Seo-yeon
The story, a focus on childhood
Sun, a 12-year-old girl, is completely ignored by the rest of her classmates. During the summer, she befriends another little girl her age, but when classes start again, her new girlfriend takes the same attitude as the other class students. Impressions During the 90s, John Maybury, considered one of the best music video directors of that time, directed the video for the version of Nothing Compares 2 U, sung by Sinéad O'Connor. Apart from a few scenes in the park of Saint-Cloud in Paris, the clip only shows us the face of the singer in close-up. We see anger, sadness, distress… It was necessary to dare to shoot a video in this way at the risk of being wrong in all beauty but, this idea, this clip was elected best video clip in 1990 at the MTV Video Music Awards. The world of us starts directly with the facial expressions of a little girl. Children play around her, no one chooses her to play. Very framed first shots, a bit like one of those fans who films a single singer of a band during a concert. The action takes place around it, but the spectators do not see it. The camera is focused on the expression of the little girl. And hats off. Because we see all kinds of emotions going through the face of this very young actress. This perhaps makes us finally understand Wong Kar-wai's choice, in In the Mood for Love, to focus on the expression of the actors. The world of us still evokes the tacit castes of South Korea (a thorny and recurring subject that Koreans do not seem to be ready to get rid of). It is given to us – for lovers of Korean cinema – to see very often screenings that highlight a disenchanted youth, completely lost and contrary to the sacrosanct rules of the country, confusionism. This youth only seeks to escape the pressure and becomes an absolutely underground image that the territory forces itself to hide. But these young people were once children. Very often, children from poor families. And we don't mix with poor families. A production as captivating as John Maybury's music video, with Sinéad O'Connor. We look at every detail, every reaction. We never get tired of it. As with the singer, the slightest emotion is reflected on Sun's clear face. Each expression speaks to us, tells us like a kind of language that would belong only to itself.
The House of Us
Director and Writer: Yoon Ga-Eun Director of Photography: Kim Ji-Hyun Release date: August 22, 2019 Duration: 92 minutes. Genre: Family Language: Korean Country: South Korea Distribution Kim Na-Yeon Kim Si-A Joo Ye-Rim Ahn Ji-Ho Son Seok-Bae Kang Min-Jun Kim Han-Na Choi Jung-In Seol Hye-In Lee Ju-Won
History, no small prairie house on the horizon
Ha-na, a 12-year-old teenager, witnesses her parents' continual arguments. She proposes a family trip believing that this way, things will work out. She meets Yoo-mi who lives with her little sister and their uncle who is always away. Abandoned by all, left to their fate, the three little girls create their own world, their own home. The disadvantage of filming only close-ups is that after a while, it feels like the actors are walking around with a kind of square bubble around them. The limits of our television become a prison that supports, that tightens this kind of helplessness felt by the three little girls. And it gives a feeling of heaviness. Especially if emotions force them to display the same expression all the time. The world of us fully immersed us thanks to its story full of air and oxygen. It is a very tough situation, certainly. The harassment, tacit or physical, is terrible but this young actress knows how to give an almost transparent side, like a certain flight, while in The house of us, Ha-na's obsession becomes the obsession of the film. The first film is fluid, the spaces make it even more powerful, like the silences in a melody (like the walks in the park of Sinéad O'Connor's video), while we could compare the second film to a settlement of vertebrae. No respite. And this magnificent discovery of the other short films and this first film disintegrates a little bit. Despite the power of emotions, we could end up being disenchanted. Korean cinema is not all extreme violence, extreme games or "everything to extreme". It's like anyone who thinks that all Indian cinema boils down to Bollywood. South Korea finances and favours new directors, but they still have to be allowed to cross borders. Are arthouse films doomed to stand still? Let's hope that with female directors like Yoon Ga-Eun things will change and that slowly, these other films will eventually arrive in France.
Price
- 2017 53rd Baeksang Arts Awards – Best Screenplay (The World of Us)
- 2017 8th KOFRA Film Awards – Best Independent Film (The World of Us)
- 2016 Zlín Film Festival – International Film Festival for Children – International Children's Feature Film Competition – The Golden Slipper (The World of Us)
- 2016 Blue Dragon Film Awards – Best New Director (The World of Us)
- 2016 25th Buil Film Awards – Best New Director (The World of Us)
- Festival international du film de Berlin 2016 – Generation (The World of Us)
- 2016 TIFF Kids International Film Festival – TIFF KIDS (The World of Us)
- 2016 Udine Far East Film Festival – Competition Section – SOUTH KOREA (The World of Us)
- 2016 Zlín Film Festival – International Film Festival for Children (2016) – International Children's Feature Film Competition – City of Zlín Award – for Best Child Actor in a Children's Feature Film (The World of Us)
- 2016 Toronto Korean Film Festival – Opening Night Presentation (The World of Us)
- Festival international du film de Busan 2016 – Korean Cinema Today-Panorama (The World of Us)
- 2016 Tokyo Filmex – Competition Films (The World of Us)
- 2016 International Film Festival of India – Country Focus – Republic of Korea (The World of Us)
- Festival international du film de Shanghai 2016 – Panorama – Korean Films2 (The World of Us)
- Busan International Short Film Festival 2014: BISFF (Sprout)
- 2014 Berlin International Film Festival – Generation – Crystal Bear for Best Short Film (Sprout)
- 2014 Aspen Shortsfest – International Competition (Sprout)
- Busan International Short Film Festival 2014: BISFF (Sprout)
- 2014 SEOUL International Women's Film Festival (2014) – Asian Short Film and Video Competition (Sprout)
- 2013 Prague Short Film Festival – Panorama (Guest)
- 2013 Flickerfest International Short Film Festival – Competition Section (Guest)
- 2013 Busan International Film Festival – Wide Angle: Korean Short Film Competition – Sonje Special Prize (Sprout)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-EF60neguk
