French-Cambodian director takes top prize at film festival
Keo Kereya | Publication date 12 October 2022 | 20:20 ICT

Poster for the film Return to Seoul. PHOTO SUPPLIED

The film Return to Seoul by French-Khmer filmmaker Chou Davy won the Golden Athena Best Film award at the 28th Athens International Film Festival in Greece. The award is the festival’s top honour, given out each year at the close of the event.

At the awards ceremony on October 8 in Athens, the festival jury praised Return to Seoul for its honest portrayal of a relationship between a mother and daughter, capturing the complexity of family relationships and what it means to be adopted into one culture and still feel connected to the culture of your birth.

Chou Davy is a Cambodian filmmaker born and raised in France. Return to Seoul was released in 2022 and is Davy’s third feature film following previous efforts Koh Pich and The Golden Sleep.

But unlike Koh Pich and The Golden Sleep – which were both films that were set in Cambodia and essentially about people living their lives in the Kingdom of the present day – the film Return to Seoul, as its title would indicate, was shot in South Korea and is a story about a Korean woman named Freddie who is left by her parents at an orphanage and then adopted and raised by a French family in France from an early age.

Then, at age 25 and curious about her roots, the French-Korean woman returns to Seoul for the first time and decides to find her biological parents and the events that proceed from that quest end up changing her outlook and her life completely.
Full article: https://www.phnompenhpost.com/lifestyle ... m-festival

Oscars best international feature 2023: all the films submitted so far
By Screen staff18 October 2022


https://www.screendaily.com/news/oscars ... 53.article

15th Asia Pacific Screen Awards
The Film "Return to Seoul" Continues to Reap International Awards

Cambodian director claims int’l award
Post Staff | Publication date 12 November 2022 | 09:28 ICT

The film “Return to Seoul” by Cambodian-French filmmaker Davy Chou has won the 15th Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) for Best Director. The win marks the first ever by a Cambodian, according to an APSA press statement.

“The first win for a Cambodian filmmaker, Cambodian/French filmmaker Davy Chou has won the APSA for Best Director for Return to Seoul (France, Belgium, Germany, Cambodia, Qatar), the only film to take home two awards at this year’s event,” said the statement.

French-Korean newcomer Park Ji-min also won an award, for Best New Performer for her debut role in Return to Seoul.

Davy Chou and Park Ji-min accepted their awards virtually and thanked the whole international team behind the film.

The awards were announced at a Gala Ceremony on Australia’s Gold Coast on the evening of November 11, with nominees in attendance for first time since 2019.
https://www.phnompenhpost.com/lifestyle ... intl-award

‘Return To Seoul’s Davy Chou On Exploring The “Depth Of Contradictory Emotions” For An Adoptee Returning Home – Contenders L.A.
November 19, 2022

In 2011, director Davy Chou was heading to South Korea for the first time when one of his best friends decided to tag along to show him around “her country.”

“It was shocking to hear her say ‘my country,’ ” Chou said during an appearance at Deadline’s Contenders Film: Los Angeles, since his friend never talked about Korea because she was adopted in France at an early age. “[It was] also very showing of her impulsive personality that Freddie, the character of the film, has.”

Upon meeting his friend’s biological father and grandmother, Chou had the inspiration for Return to Seoul. Written and directed by Chou, Return to Seoul, or All The People I’ll Never Be, follows Freddie (Park Ji-Min), a 25-year-old French woman who travels to South Korea to find her biological family. Having been adopted and raised in France, Freddie’s travel to an unknown country takes her life in new and unexpected directions. The Sony Pictures Classics film premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section.

Chou said the most striking part of the meeting he witnessed was “the depth of the contradictory emotions mixing together. So much anger on the side of my friend, so much regret and sadness from the other side, and the impossibility of these two sides of the table to really communicate with the barrier of the language and the cultural barrier.”
https://dnyuz.com/2022/11/19/return-to- ... nders-l-a/

Interview with Chou Davy by Martine Neang from the Lycée français René Descartes in Phnom Penh.
Filmed by Kavich Neang in partnership with French College René Descartes.
Réalisé par Kavich Neang dans le cadre de la Nuit des idées 2021 à l'Institut français du Cambodge, sur le thème Proches.
En partenariat avec le Lycée français René Descartes.

Interview conducted in French with English subtitles.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/return_to_seoul

CAA and Anonymous Content Sign ‘Return to Seoul’ Filmmaker Davy Chou (EXCLUSIVE)
Dec 9, 2022
“Return to Seoul” writer-director Davy Chou has signed with CAA and Anonymous Content for representation.

The Cambodian-French filmmaker’s latest film “Return to Seoul” has been selected as Cambodia’s official entry for the international feature category at the 2023 Academy Awards and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for best international film.

Chou wrote and directed the film, which follows Freddie (Park Ji-Min), a 25-year-old French woman who returns to Korea, where she was born before being adopted, for the very first time. When she decides to track down her biological parents, her journey takes a surprising turn.

The movie premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics (and subsequently renamed from “All the People I’ll Never Be”). The film went on to screen at TIFF, the NYFF and more than 60 festivals, including award-winning showings at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, Athens International Film Festival, Hamptons International Film Festival and the Belfast Film Festival.

In her review for Variety, Jessica Kiang praised the film for its “audaciously interrupted storytelling,” noting that it “represents a step up in ambition from the woozily atmospheric yet comparatively simple narrative of Chou’s fiction feature debut, ‘Diamond Island’ … But while ‘Return to Seoul’ is more sharply focused in its minutiae, over its near two-hour length it accumulates a similarly heady, evocative mood: wistful without being wishy-washy; bittersweet without the slightest hint of twee.”
https://variety.com/2022/film/news/caa- ... 235454896/

Pakistan, Cambodia, India, South Korea make 2023 Oscars international feature shortlist
Isa Peralta
Fri, December 23, 2022
Films from four Asian countries – Pakistan, Cambodia, India and South Korea – have made the shortlist for the 2023 Oscars Best International Feature Film category.

On Wednesday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science unveiled the 15-film shortlist. Films from 92 countries and regions were considered this year.

Only five films from the shortlist will be selected by the International Feature Film Nominating Committee to become category nominees.
Each country and region can only submit one film per year.

To be considered for the upcoming Oscars, Pakistan submitted Saim Sadiq’s “Joyland," Cambodia submitted Davy Chou’s “Return to Seoul,” South Korea submitted Park Chan-wook’s “Decision to Leave” and India submitted Pan Nalin’s “Last Film Show."
https://news.yahoo.com/pakistan-cambodi ... 12888.html