Paris to Pyongyang

Subrosa traces a young woman's journey to Korea, the land of her birth, to find the mother she's never known.

A young woman falls in love with a shoplifter in her family's convenience store, setting off a series of mishaps involving a lost doll, a loaded gun and a grandmother who speaks only Korean.

Shadowed by the death of her mother, Julie Kumagai's life with her widower father is marked by pained, turbulent exchanges. Indifferent to a break-up with her boyfriend and the lure of a long-planned trip, she finds some refuge in her workplace where she meets Tetsuro, a young Korean man newly emigrated from Japan who is obsessed with all things American. But together they discover no easy resolutions.

A large black mole above an Asian woman's breast serves as a metaphor for cultural and racial difference in this engaging experimental film. Off-screen women's voices and scenes from THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG parallel and counterpoint Sally's own interracial relationships and emerging self-awareness. A provocative and stylish meditation on Asian femininity.

In a drama conveyed with great astuteness and empathy by director Helen Lee, a 16 year old's private catastrophe collides with a much larger tragedy off the coast of South Korea in 2014.