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Couleur de peau: Miel, aka Approved for Adoption, screens at Leeds Young Film Fest

Approved for Adoption still 1

If it wasn’t for the fact that London has a date with Moon So-ri this Thursday, I’d be leaving work early, getting on a train to Leeds and sitting down to watch this film. I do hope it comes to London at some stage.

It’s the animated autobiography of a Korean adoptee in Belgium. Korean adoptees are relatively rare in the UK (according to Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare statistics from 2002 there are only 72). But on continental Europe, particularly France, Belgium, Holland and the Scandinavian countries, they number in their thousands.

One of the poignant aspects of this documentary is that in his childhood the boy decides that he really wants to be Japanese, not Korean.

Here’s a recommendation from Maxym Anciaux, one of the voice actors in the film:

Je suis la voix Française de Eric, le frêre de Yung, je fais du doublage depuis 7 ans, je recommande ce film, qui est très émouvant, avec une vrai leçon de vie

(Source)

ApprovedAdoption-02

The film won the Audience Award at the 2012 Annecy International Animation Festival.

Approved for Adoption / Couleur de peau: Miel

Director: Laurent Boileau / Jung
Country: Belgium, France, South Korea, Switzerland
Running Time: 70 mins
Language: French
Subtitles: Yes
Year: 2012
Age Rating: 12A
Thu 4th Apr, 2013 – 18:30
Ticket link @ Hyde Park Picture House – £2.00 U19 / £5.00/£4.00 Adult

A beautifully animated autobiography about South Korean graphic artist Jung (also the animator) who was adopted by Belgian parents in the 1970s and grew up never knowing his home of birth. The animation is intercut with real home movies and documentary footage of the author returning to Korea for the first time in his 42 year life.

42 years old according to his civil status, Jung prefers to place his birth at the age of 5, when a policeman found him wandering alone on the streets of Seoul. He is one of those 200,000 adopted Koreans spread around the world. Jung decided to return, for the first time, in South Korea, in order to breathe the air of his home country, tread the land of his ancestors, and maybe find traces of his biological mother. This trip of reconciliation with his roots and with himself — shot as a documentary — leads our character to recall — in animation — the child he once was and the winding path that made him grow up, until the encounter with his wife, an adopted Korean herself. This travel in time — the present of the trip and the memory of the past — will push him little by little towards a peaceful cohabitation between his inner diversities.

Thanks to Alua at Otherwhere for letting us know about this.

Links:

2 thoughts on “Couleur de peau: Miel, aka Approved for Adoption, screens at Leeds Young Film Fest

  1. I think if we don’t get a London screening, there is a good chance at a DVD release on the continent. Given it’s Belgium, it would probably come with French/Flemish/German/English subtitles all in one go… Fingers crossed in any case.

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