Film Screening: Overseas by Sung-A Yoon
Alliance Francaise in Dubai will screen Sung-A Yoon’s critically acclaimed and award winning film Overseas on October 27, part of simultaneous screenings in multiple cities in France and around the world to celebrate the launch of 21st edition of Le mois du film documentaire (Documentary Month).
If you live in one of the following cities, you can watch the screening at a physical venue (or online where stated):
France
Paris: Centre Pompidou (invitation only)
Nîmes: Bibliothèque Carré d’Art
Tourcoing: Heure Exquise! at Fresnoy
Reims: Médiathèque Jean Falala
Spain
Barcelona: Institut français
Madrid: Institut français
United Kingdom
London: Institut français
Algeria
Algeirs: Institut français
Oran: Institut français
Morocco
Marrakech: Institut français (physical and online screening)
Casablanca: Institut français (online screening only)
Tunisia
Tunis: Institut français (physical and online screening)
A live discussion (in French) with Sung A-Yoon will be broadcast after the screening and it will include audience interaction.
Sung A-Yoon is a French-Korean artist and filmmaker. Her work is concerned with process and mise-en-scène. Playing both with the conventions of documentary practice and the codes of narrative cinema, she makes hybrid films that resist narrow categorisation.
I am happy to say I will introduce the film (in English) before it starts, and I am looking forward to watching this film with a Dubai based audience. It’s an incredibly important film that needs to be watched by people in this part of the world.
The screening is on Tuesday, October at 5.30pm (France) / 8.30pm (UAE). You can buy tickets for the Dubai screening here.
Overseas
Director: Sung-A Yoon
2019 | 90 min | Tagalog, Ilonggo, English with English subtitles
In the Philippines, women get deployed abroad to work as domestic workers or nannies. In order to do so, they frequently leave their own children behind before throwing themselves into the unknown. In one of the many local filipino training centres dedicated to domestic work, a group of trainees are getting ready to face both homesickness and the possible abuses lying ahead.
During role playing exercises, they alternatively play both the roles of the employee and that of the employers. Bordering on fiction, OVERSEAS brings to light the question of modern servitude in our globalised world, while emphasising these women’s determination, their sisterhood, and the strategies they find to face the ordeals that awaits them in the near future.
Overseas was selected to screen at many international festivals and has won several awards. I am glad it will be screened in Dubai, even if it’s for one night only. Don’t miss this.
Here are a few quotes from reviews of the film if you need to be convinced:
“The most sympathetic, illuminating study of domestic labor since Roma, French-Korean writer-director Sung-a Yoon’s documentary hybrid Overseas ranked among nonfiction titles unveiled at the Locarno International Film Festival this year.” Neil Young, The Hollywood Reporter
“The individual is linked to the structural, but because Overseas is so firmly grounded in the individualities of the trainees it avoids dehumanising the women or reducing them to allegorical examples. In the end, the woman is always at the centre of her own story.” Georgie Carr, Another Gaze
“Overseas is a harrowing story of resilience, an elegy of people pushed to the margins, whom Yoon restitutes as dignified and strong-willed fighters, in a work that dances between reality and fiction to an engrossing extent.” Leonardo Goi, The Film Stage
“Sung-A Yoon, tactful, with a respect for her heroines, balances between creative and documenting elements in a well-executed manner. She is not exclaiming any accusations or pointing blacks and whites to her viewers, mostly building a foundation for discussion and reflection. Never nearing to emotional blackmail, which would be an easy solution considering the subject, is the big strength of Overseas.” Joanna Konczak, Asian Movie Pulse