Ju Ro-mi

This year is the 30th anniversary of the Gwangju Democratization Movement. Though the country commemorates the event as the official historical records, it does not include any 'real' accounts of the people who experienced it firsthand. The students who were part of the movement; the female vendors who made rice balls for the students; the female high school students cooked at the government building; now, past their middle age, they live as ordinary citizens in Gwangju city. How is the event remembered by these people?

The film opens with the words of Taebaek's last miners: "I had to earn a living." These are the first words, spoken over the shot of a cage descending endlessly into a mine—the place that the miners of the soon-to-be-closed Jangseong Mining Station call hell. They began working out of poverty, needing to make a living somehow. Though they planned to quit after three days, they ended up staying for over 30 years, and in all that time, they saw nothing good.

All the family members willingly went through hardship travelling numerous cities and countries including Gwangju city, Cambodia, Bosnia, and Palestine, and the young children became grown-ups doing so. There were joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure in their journey as they chose to visit the troubled parts of the world with not enough money.

Wizdan lives in the rural village of Sebastia. Both their parents are olive farmers. With the expansion of Israeli settlements, Wizdan's and Nidal's parents are losing their farmland, but the problem is not theirs alone. But many Palestinians have been living in refugee camps for almost 70 years, and the fourth generation of refugees are growing up in refugee camps today. They struggle to guard their land despite repeated humiliation, and the film focuses on the resistance of such ordinary Palestinians including Wizdan's family.

Gangjeong Village, located at the southernmost part of Jeju Island's Seogwipo City, is in the true sense a 'breathtaking land of water.' In this film, eight directors independently yet collaboratively orchestrate a clever and humorous "mission" at this place where the groundwork for building a naval military base is in progress.