ACF - Asian Cinema Fund

2025 Co-Production Support Fund

LIST Half Moon

Director’s Profile

Hyojoo Yang won a Sonje Award 2010 (BIFF), and a Silver Bear 2011 (Berlinale) for her graduation film Broken Night, marking a turning point in her career as a director and screenwriter in South Korea. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Directing at Korea National University of Arts. As an energetic and adventurous filmmaker, she knew there was a richness of opportunity to be found abroad, so she flew to Berlin in 2018 to seek new ways of expanding her artistic view. Yang entered the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK) in 2020 to study Art and Media. Her focus is the interplay between artistic experimentation and narrative filmmaking, under the guidance of Dir. Thomas Arslan. She is currently preparing to shoot her debut film Half Moon in Germany, and is writing the screenplay for her next feature film project about an international adoption between Korean and Germany.

Synopsis

Summer break begins. Yeri, a 13-year-old outcast, flees her stepfather's debts with her mother, Su-Jin, and her half-brother, Ben, and hides in Ah-Jin’s home, on a remote island in the North Sea. Contrary to Yeri's expectations, Ah-Jin greets her niece she is meeting for the first time with cold indifference. Su-Jin and Ben are busy socializing with David, an islander who claims to be Ah-Jin’s ‘comrade.’ Yeri soon finds herself alone again. Her only comfort comes from endless jokes about death and secret phone calls with her cousin, Julian, who claims to be Ah-Jin's son. When Su-Jin leaves the island with Ben, Ah-Jin quietly stays by Yeri’s side as she loses her will to live amidst the despair of abandonment. Alone with Ah-Jin, Yeri confronts the dark family history that deeply scarred her aunt, both physically and emotionally. She begins caring for Ah-Jin, who is addicted to opioids. One hot day, the two head to the beach together. As they slowly open their hearts to each other while swimming, David, who has been harboring a grudge against Ah-Jin for no longer sharing drugs, appears and reveals his darker side.

Director’s Note / Intention

As I closed the final chapter of Kim Geum-hee's short story "Half Moon," the journey of a girl, echoing memories of my own childhood, struck me as a vivid cinematic inspiration. The original story of a high school girl, lost in alienation and disconnection as she spends a summer with her eccentric aunt, was reimagined through the narrative of Korean-German immigrants. A teenage girl facing emotional growing pains. An aunt whose life has been unbalanced by wounds left by her family. In capturing their struggle in an unkind world, I realized something: this film is a postcard to Yeri, and to my younger self. Its final sentence would read: Pain, like the moon in the sky, will wax and wane, circling our lives. And through it all, we promise ourselves to grow, heal, and shine even in the darkest moments.

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