On the paper, the story could hardly be more minimal: Jin, a 5 year-old little girl lives in Pusan, in a small apartment, with her mother and her little sister Bin. While their mother decides to go look for the father of her children, from whom she is estranged, Jin and Bin are put in the care of an unsympathetic, matronly, alcoholic aunt, in the province, before moving on to live at their grandparents’.

For her second feature film, Treeless Mountain, a sort of intimate portrait of an abandoned child, Korean-American director Kim So-Yong gained the support of  L'Atelier, a branch of the Cinéfondation, at the Cannes Film Festival. Directed by Georges Goldenstern, the goal of this organization, created in 2005, is to help the completion of about fifteen film projects world-wide each year. “The filmmakers are selected according to the quality of their project and that of their previous films, as well as on the state of progress of their finance plan. The programme will enable them to gain access to international financing and speed up the production process”, reads the statement on the website of the Cinéfondation.

Introduced by L’Atelier, the director was able to present her project to a whole host of potential partners. Treeless Mountain, shot in 16 mm, is a relatively inexpensive work: about $1,2 million. Kim So-Yong would like to make her film in Korea, in Pusan and in the countryside, for six weeks, from September 2007.

Born in Pusan, like her character, she moved to the US at age 12. She studied painting and video at the Art Institute of Chicago and obtained her M.F.A there.

She already benefits from the support of three producers : Oh Jung-Wan and Ellen Kim, of Bom Films Productions, and her husband Bradley Gray, who produced her first feature film, In Between Days, which was selected for Dramatic Competition at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival (it won the special jury prize), and screened at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival’s International Forum for New Cinema, where it was awarded the prize of the FIPRESCI.