Asian Cinema Fund

ACF Asian Cinema Fund

Asian Network of Documentary(AND) Fund

2022 Asian Network of Documentary (AND) Fund

LIST My Class

Category	Bo Myung Metal Fund
Project	My Class
Director	KIM Jeong-keun
Country	Korea
Director's Profile	Kim Jeung-keun worked as a production worker at a shoe parts factory for five years after dropping out of technical high school. While working there, he developed an interest in activist documentaries and Taiwanese New Wave films. He explores themes of labor and the bodies of workers in counterpoint to the physical properties of industrial machinery. Due to his developing interest in film and without any formal training, Kim shot Get on the Bus (2012) and The Island of Shadows (2014), dealing with the Hanjin Heavy Industry labor strikes and the ‘Hope Bus’ demonstrations.

Synopsis: Three 17-year-old technical school friends, full of the vigor of youth, venture out into the world as a factory worker, a cellphone salesman, and a soldier.

Sung-woon, a second-year student in the Practical Course at Busan Technical High School, is in the practice room yet again, surrounded by the smell of grease, using the milling machine. He stares at the design plans, but has no idea how to make what the drawings show. Du-in, a second-year student in the Vocational Course, rides his motorcycle through the streets at night. He has taken on a part-time job as a delivery driver to save money, hoping to open a small store after graduation. Unlike his two friends, Jung-hwan still has hopes of going to college, but can’t seem to improve his grades. Although he attends a cram school, it only fuels his impatience rather than benefiting his test scores. One day in May, the three hear the news that it is already the second anniversary of the death of a young maintenance worker at Guui Station. All three try to ignore the news, but they cannot hide their anxiety. The three each stand at their own crossroads; both excited and nervous about what tomorrow will bring.

Director's Note: The Republic of Korea has changed from a society in confrontation between progressive and conservative, which is to say ‘a world divided into left and right’, to a confrontation between classes; between the worlds ‘inside and outside the fence’. As inequality increases and the prospects of social mobility have decreased, I would like to tell the story of three innocent friends stepping out into society, who have not yet figured out the world in which they live; three technical high schoolers who continue to be marginalized and unwanted. Through the lives of these youngsters, I hope to show what it is like to survive outside the fence of ‘class’. But, most of all, I want to capture the burgeoning of youth struggling out into the world, and cheer for our friends as they each face the future in their own way.
My Class has the feel of reportage, following these young laborers as they first join the workforce of a capitalist society, yet is also a lively coming-of-age tale about teens in technical high schools, whose struggles continue to be ignored by the media.

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