There is nothing overstated about Yoon Dan-bi’s films; her stories take shape through families sharing a home, young people spending time together, conversations that seem ordinary and feelings that are not always easy to explain. Her feature debut, Moving On (2019), follows teenage Okju and her younger brother as they move with their father into their grandfather’s home for the summer. As the family settles into life together, old tensions come to the surface, but so do moments of warmth and affection. The film premiered at the Busan International Film Festival in 2019, where it received four awards, including the NETPAC and Directors’ Guild of Korea awards, before travelling internationally and winning the Bright Future Award at International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Her second feature, The World Before, follows Jin (Sim Su-bin) as she experiences first love and desire for the first time, and begins to discover parts of herself she has never had to face before. The young girl has spent her life on Soando, an island that is neither a prison nor an idyllic escape; it is simply home. When Dujae (Kim Eo-jin), someone she has known since childhood, returns to the island for his grandmother’s funeral, Jin begins to experience feelings she cannot yet fully understand. Her attraction to him brings jealousy, expectation and the desire to be close to another person, but it also changes the way she sees herself and the world she has always known. As Yoon explains in our conversation, she is interested less in conventional ideas of adolescence than in the moment when someone begins to question the world they thought they knew and, at the same time, becomes unfamiliar to themselves.

Yoon never tries to turn Jin’s feelings into something bigger than they need to be; much of what is happening between Jin and Dujae is found in the way they look at each other, how close they sit or walk and Jin’s awkward attempts to spend a little more time beside him. Her first love isn’t presented as something purely sweet or innocent either.

Soando is just as important to the film and Yoon doesn’t use the island simply because it is beautiful, or change the way we see it according to Jin’s mood; people are working, leaving, coming home and getting on with their lives while Jin is going through a summer that will change her.

Yoon also talks about Jin’s first experience of love and desire, casting Sim Su-bin and Kim Eo-jin, the freedom she gave them while filming, and why she wanted Soando to feel like a real place rather than a romantic backdrop. She also talks about Moving On, and how the smallest moments can become the ones we remember most.

View of the Arts: Moving On and The World Before are very different films, but both focus on young people at a point when their familiar world begins to change. What draws you to that period of life, when someone is no longer a child but is still trying to understand who they are becoming?

Yoon Dan-bin: I didn’t set out from the beginning thinking that I had to make a film about adolescence or growing up. What interests me, I think, is the moment when someone begins to question, for the first time, the world they thought they knew. When you’re young, your family, the place you live, and the relationships around you simply are your entire world. But at some point, you begin to realise that maybe that isn’t all there is. You also start to understand that even someone you thought you knew incredibly well may, in fact, be someone you hardly know at all.

At the same time, you begin to feel unfamiliar to yourself. If that happened through family in Moving On, then in The World Before, I think it happens through desire. Jin experiences strong feelings for someone for the first time, and through that, she also begins to look at who she is for the first time. She gets jealous, she has expectations, she wants to possess someone, and sometimes she behaves in ways that even she can’t understand.

I don’t think growing up is a process in which someone suddenly becomes a better person. I think it’s closer to discovering that you are far more complicated and strange than you thought you were. I suppose I’m naturally drawn to characters at that point in their lives, when those changes arrive for the first time and with such intensity.

VOA: The World Before finds its story in very ordinary things: visiting someone, walking through the village and simply spending time together. Why did you want your second feature to focus on a life that might initially seem uneventful from the outside?

YDB: Looking back, I think the moments that became important in my life didn’t seem like such significant events at the time. Some things only grow in importance later, in our memories.

That’s why I wanted The World Before to feel like looking back at an old memory. Almost like accidentally coming across your grandmother’s old diary. It might be filled with very personal, seemingly ordinary things, but as you keep reading, somehow you begin to get a sense of an entire period of that person’s life. I didn’t want the film to turn those small, intimate moments into major events too quickly, or to immediately give them a particular meaning. I hoped the audience could simply move through that time alongside Jin, until at some point they find themselves thinking, “Ah, something in her has already changed.”

With first love, too, rather than presenting it as something dramatic, I wanted to capture it in a realistic way: the feeling arriving in someone’s life for the first time, and the experience of that person gradually finding their way through it.

VOA: Jin has never left the island, so Dujae’s return does more than introduce the possibility of first love; through him, she also begins to look differently at the place she has known all her life. Was that connection between falling in love and becoming more aware of the world beyond the island something you wanted to explore from the beginning?

YDB: Yes. But I didn’t want it to become a story where Jin meets Dujae and suddenly starts to feel trapped by the island or begins longing for the world beyond it. To Jin, the island isn’t a prison, it’s where she was born and raised, where the people she cares about live. It’s so familiar to her that she has never really had a reason to think about it. It is simply her world.

What mattered was not that the island itself changed, but that Jin’s perception of it began to change. Dujae is someone who grew up there, left the island and experienced life elsewhere before eventually returning. For Jin, he is not only someone she likes, but also someone who has already lived through a part of life that she has yet to experience. So as her feelings for Dujae grow, other thoughts naturally begin to surface: “What was his life like in a place I know nothing about?” and “Where will I end up living in the future?”

When you fall in love, the world that once seemed completely ordinary can suddenly start to look a little different. The place itself hasn’t changed, but because something in you has, the landscape seems different too. So Jin’s desire for Dujae and her growing awareness of the world beyond the island were never entirely separate things. But at the same time, this isn’t a story about Jin beginning to dream of Seoul or city life because of Dujae. It’s closer to her realising, for the first time, that there are other ways of living beyond the only world she has ever known.

VOA: The island is beautiful, but you never romanticise it. I love how you gave the voice to the island. How important was it to show the island as a real home rather than simply using it as a beautiful setting for the story?

YDB: It was incredibly important. When you look at an island from the outside, it’s very easy to romanticise it, as somewhere isolated, surrounded by beautiful nature, where time seems to move more slowly. But for the people who live there, it’s simply everyday life; they might be looking out at a beautiful sea, but they still have work to do. Some people leave, some come back, and others spend their entire lives there.

That’s why I didn’t want to use Soando simply as a landscape that reflected Jin’s inner world. I didn’t want to film the sea so that it looked sad whenever Jin was sad, or suddenly make the island look beautiful when she fell in love. What mattered more was creating a sense that life there continued regardless of what Jin was feeling. That was also why local residents appeared in the film and took part in scenes such as the funeral.

In some ways, while this is a film about Jin’s first love, I also wanted it to capture Soando during that particular summer – the faces and voices of the people who lived there, as well as the weather and the passage of time.

VOA: Jin and Dujae’s relationship grows through small, sometimes awkward moments. Why did you want to show first love in this quiet and natural way rather than through bigger romantic scenes?

YDB: While working on the film, I used the phrase “first love” a lot, but I kept feeling that those words alone didn’t quite capture what I was trying to express. When we think of first love, we tend to imagine something very beautiful and innocent. What I wanted to portray was less about liking someone for the first time, and more about the moment when you first discover that this kind of desire exists within you.

Jin wants to see Dujae; she wants to be with him, and she wants him to have eyes only for her. But then she begins to realise that he doesn’t like her as much as she had hoped. She becomes jealous; she wants to possess him, and at times she even finds herself having thoughts that aren’t particularly kind. I think those things are also part of love. And because it’s her first time experiencing all of this, she doesn’t really know what to do. She doesn’t know how to approach him, so she finds herself lingering around him for no particular reason. She pretends not to care, while in reality every little thing he says affects her. I thought there was something very physical about that awkwardness. Before she can put her feelings into words, her body is already moving towards him, wanting to be just a little closer.

So rather than creating dramatic romantic scenes, what mattered more to me was how the two of them walked together, how much distance they left between each other when they sat down, and the moments when Jin looked at Dujae.

In the end, I think what matters for Jin is not whether her love for Dujae is reciprocated, but that, for the first time, she discovers that she is capable of wanting someone this much.

VOA: Sim Su-bin and Kim Eo-jin have a very natural chemistry. What did you see in them during casting, and how did you work with them to keep Jin and Dujae feeling like two young people we could genuinely meet in a place like this?

YDB: When I first meet actors, rather than spending a lot of time reading through the script, I tend to talk with them about more personal things. When I first met both actors, there was something very unfiltered and raw about them that I found appealing. Shim Su-bin was someone whose introverted nature came through very naturally. During our meeting, she would get shy or flustered, but at the same time, I found her remarkably self-assured. What I really liked was that she didn’t try to present a more polished or sociable version of herself just to make a good impression on me.

There were moments when whatever she was feeling at that particular moment would simply show on her face, and I thought that would suit Jin very well.

Kim Eo-jin was similar in the sense that he would often tell me stories about himself in a very spontaneous, almost rambling way, and I found that charming. I think what I liked about both of them was that neither seemed particularly interested in presenting a carefully put-together version of themselves.

I wanted to preserve that same sense of naturalness not only in the performances, but also in the way we created the spaces around them. For example, when we filmed their first kiss, I didn’t approach it by looking for the kind of romantic location you might normally associate with a kiss scene. Instead, we found a small Porter truck, the kind you would actually see on the island, and placed it in the setting. We then tried to create a situation where the two of them could spend time around it and naturally arrive at that moment.

So rather than having the location itself seem to say, “This is where they should kiss,” it was important that it felt as though something like that had simply happened between them in a completely ordinary place. Rather than having the actors or the setting create a cinematic mood from the outset, I wanted it to feel as though the camera was simply observing two young people who were really there.

VOA: There are two emotional moments towards the end that are particularly powerful: Dujae crying by the sea and Jin saying goodbye to her friend before breaking down in the middle of the road. How did you approach directing those scenes, and how much freedom did you give Sim and Kim once the cameras were rolling?

YDB: I don’t think that when someone cries, it is necessarily because of one particular thing that has just happened. Sometimes things have been building up for a long time, and they come out at a moment when you least expect them to. I didn’t want to explain Dujae crying by the sea with one specific reason either. It could be his grandmother’s death, or the emotions that come with returning to a place he once left behind. It could also have something to do with his feelings for Jin, or the knowledge that he will have to leave again. I felt that if I reduced it to just one of those things, Dujae would somehow become a smaller character.

It was similar with the scene where Jin cries on the road. In that moment, I think she is feeling not only the end of her relationship with Dujae, but the end of that entire summer. After saying goodbye to her friend and finding herself alone, it is almost as though her body understands before her mind does that she can never return to the time she knew before.

During filming, I tried to give both actors as much freedom as possible. In particular, I didn’t want to decide exactly when they should cry or how intensely. If you tell an actor, “You have to cry here,” they inevitably begin performing towards the end result of crying. I told them that if they didn’t feel like crying, they didn’t have to. And if the tears didn’t come in that moment, rather than forcing them, they could shout or express the emotion in a completely different way. They didn’t have to stick to what we had planned, and if they needed to move out of frame, that was fine too.

That doesn’t mean I left everything entirely up to the actors. Too much freedom can become a burden in itself. Rather than telling them what emotion to feel, I tried to suggest specific actions that might allow the emotion to emerge naturally. Jin might place her hand on Dujae’s arm, for example, or look directly into his eyes. I felt that small actions like physical contact or holding someone’s gaze could sometimes create a genuine emotional response.

What I wanted was not a performance that precisely reproduced an emotion we had decided on beforehand, but to capture, as truthfully as possible, whatever was actually happening to the actors in that moment.

VOA: Moving On travelled remarkably far for a Korean independent film, while films of this scale still have to fight for screens and audiences. Did the international response to your first feature change anything for you as a filmmaker, and what do you hope audiences in Korea and abroad will take from The World Before?

YDB: When I was making Moving On, I never imagined the film would travel as far as it did. It was a very small film, and I started it simply wanting to make something good and worthwhile. Later, as I watched it travel to different film festivals and reach so many audiences, I never really thought of that entirely as my own achievement. At some point, I felt as though the film had left my hands and taken on a life of its own, almost like a living thing. There was something quite amazing about that, and I was very grateful for it.

I feel the same way about The World Before. While I was making it, I poured as much as I could into the film, but once it was finished, how people would respond to it and how far it might go were no longer things I could control. Now I feel that my role is simply to stand beside it, watch as it finds people on its own, and quietly cheer it on.

I think the reasons people keep going in life, the things that actually sustain us, often begin with things that seem surprisingly small. But cinema is a medium that can easily be drawn towards things that are bigger, more dramatic or more obviously significant. And in that process, certain things can disappear. I began to think that perhaps those smaller things are actually closer to the way we really live.

When I was making Moving On, and again while making The World Before, I never believed that I somehow knew the truth about any of this. I simply wanted to look a little more closely and try to get a little nearer to it. So I hope that, rather than continuing to see the characters in the film as people whose lives have nothing to do with their own, at some point the audience might begin to recognise something of themselves in them. I’d be happy if, while watching the film, they naturally found themselves thinking about their own family, their own desires, or perhaps a period of their life that has already passed.

And personally, I hope my films might make someone love cinema just a little more. I found comfort in the films of other directors, and through them I was able to experience lives I had never lived myself. That is how I came to love cinema, and it is part of the reason I am still making films today. If one of my films could give someone even a small experience like that, I would be very happy.

Written and interviewed by Maggie Gogler

Featured image courtsy of Yoon Dan-bin

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