Jin Mi-song takes Cannes La Cinef honor

South Korean director Jin Mi-song won second prize in the La Cinef competition at the 79th Cannes Film Festival with her short film Silent Voices. La Cinef is Cannes’ section dedicated to short and medium-length films made by students at film schools around the world.

Jin accepted the award Wednesday at the Buñuel Theatre inside the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France. “I never expected this,” she told South Korean reporters after the ceremony. “I’m very grateful for the award, and I’ll keep striving to make better films.”

Silent Voices is a 17-minute short film that follows a day in the lives of a four-member family that emigrated from South Korea to New York, with each family member offering a different perspective on the experience.

Jin graduated from Sungkyunkwan University with degrees in English language and literature and acting arts. She produced the film as her thesis project for a master of fine arts degree in film production at Columbia University.

Nineteen films from 15 countries were selected for this year’s La Cinef competition, including Bird’s Rhapsody, an animated short by Choi Won-jung of Hongik University’s visual communication design program.

The top prize went to Laser Cat by Lucas Archer, a Brazilian student at New York University. Third prize was shared by Never Enough by France’s Julius Lagoutte Larsen and Growing Stones, Flying Papers by Roozbeh Gezerse and Soraya Shamsi of Germany.


Min Kim kimmin@donga.com