MAIFF 2026  -

KFFC

Welcome Home Freckles

June 12th

7:00 PM

Goethe Institute Montreal

Documentary

26

minutes

English, Korean

Content Warning:

About the Film

Director

Park Huiju

Country

Korea, Canada

Year

2025

Program

KFFC 4

Curated by

MAiFF Pgramming Team

Description

Synopsis | For the first time in four years, a daughter returns to Daegu, South Korea, determined to end the domestic war that plagued her childhood. They have been hurting each other for years as they never learned to live harmoniously. Despite their efforts to find peace, the scars of the past remain unresolved. Through conversations with her parents, she uncovers a pattern of domestic violence deeply ingrained in her family's history. At last, she realises that only she can break this cycle.

Programmer's note | Is home a place we return to or a time that must be made again? The film follows the footsteps of a daughter returning home and slowly reveals how the air and silence of childhood can cling to a body and a life for years. The home she faces again 4 years later comes toward her like a living thing, layered with repeated wounds that were never spoken out loud. Within it, violence seeps into tone of voice, into breath, into the distance between people, and into silence, shaking even the next step she takes. What the film holds is this invisible grain of time. The daughter’s gaze does not stay with the work of revisiting the past. It gradually turns toward another direction, shaped by her resolve to cut off the flow of pain that has reached her. That resolve begins with protecting her own life and grows into a force that can hold even the time that has not yet arrived. The film captures the moment when one person stands before a world long hardened and begins to write the first sentence of another life. As the time frozen beneath the name of home begins to move again, we are finally left to ask whether home was the place that held us captive or the first sentence of a life we might still remake.

Watch Trailer
About the Director
Park Huiju
Director
Huiju Park is a Korean documentary filmmaker based in London, whose work deeply explores the intersection of personal experience and broader societal issues. Her films are inspired by her close connection to the world around her, with a strong focus on feminism. Huiju often appears as a character within her documentaries, blending her own narrative with those of her subjects to create a dialogue between her films and the audience. This style has become her hallmark, allowing her to craft films that offer a mirror to society. After years of making personal documentaries she started extending the courage and resilience she found in her own experiences to empower new voices and perspectives.
Film Stills
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Awards & Festival Recognition

Nomination for the 2026 EE BAFTA Film Award for British Short Film, 2025 Grierson Award for Best Student Documentary, Special Jury Award at SXSW 2025

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