STATEMENT FROM DIRECTOR - SO YONG KIM

TREELESS MOUNTAIN is inspired by events from my early childhood in Pusan, Korea. My mother divorced our father and left us with our grandparents on a rice farm. She immigrated to America in order to find a better life for herself and to build a future for her children. At the time of these events we were too young to understand and our mother did not tell us what was happening. I began writing the film to search for certain lost memories from this period of my life and also as a letter to my mother.

As the story began to take shape, Jin, the main character, took on her own distinctive personality and blossomed. As the writing progressed, the story and the characters began to separate from actual events from my life. Jin's emotional and physical journey became the main force of the story. As in the case of the Aimie character in IN BETWEEN DAYS, I used my personal memories and experience as the starting point to develop Jin, and then allowed her to dictate her own journey.

TREELESS MOUNTAIN is a simple story about a six-year-old girl, Jin, and her journey to early maturity. Jin's sensitivity and the complexity of the emotions stem from her desire to have her family life back. She must let go of everything she has known in order to persevere. In this sense TREELESS MOUNTAIN is an intimate portrait of a young girl and a classic coming-of-age story. I wanted to tell the story of Jin in order to celebrate her resilience in life.