The Quiet Migration
A Korean adoptee, raised in the pastures of rural Denmark, struggles with identity and dislocation in Malene Choi’s surreal meditation on transracial adoption. Berlinale 2023.
An unspoken yearning for homeland simmers in this lush social drama. Carl, a South Korean adoptee, lives a dutiful existence in the picturesque Danish countryside, tending to the family farm he’ll inherit one day. A quiet wound festers at his centre: Carl lives in a land where nobody looks like him, where family members openly decry migration. Director Malene Choi, also a South Korean adoptee, heightens Carl’s emotional world through surreal flourishes, as he glimpses phantom impressions of his birth mother, and an ominous crack threatens to split the seemingly idyllic farmhouse in two.Malene Choi was born in South Korea and raised in Denmark. Her debut feature, the hybrid docudrama The Return, received a Special Mention at Göteborg Film Festival in 2018.
- Program Strand
- Europe! Voices of Women in Film
- Original Title
- Stille Liv
- Year
- 2023
- Classification
- Unclassified 15+
- Country
- Denmark
- Language
- In Danish with English subtitles
- Director
- Malene Choi
- Producer
- Maria Møller Kjeldgaard
- Cast
- Cornelius Won Riedel-Clausen, Bjarne Henriksen, Bodil Jørgensen
- Screenwriter
- Malene Choi, Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen
- Cinematographer
- Louise McLaughlin
- Editor
- Sofie Steenberger, Malene Choi
- Premiere
- Australian Premiere
- Genre
- Women Directors, Scandinavia
- Company Credits
- Festival Contact: Danish Film Institute
