2020 | 97MIN l Documentary

DIRECTOR Lee Soojung

CAST Yim Jaechun

RELEASE DATE March 31, 2022

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Director Lee Soojung's Sister J is a documentary film depicting the struggle of laid-off workers who had to stand on the road to regain their ‘work’ for 4,464 days, around 13 years. This is the story of the laid-off workers of Cort Cortek, who recorded the longest struggle for reinstatement in the history of Korean labor movements. Cort Cortek is the largest guitar manufacturer in Korea, which produces and exports famous brands of guitars through the OEM system, and the company once topped the global market. However, in the wake of the management crisis in 2007, the company fired all its workers. The workers who were unfairly dismissed began a struggle for reinstatement, and their fight continued for 13 years. 

Director Lee Soojung has consistently captured the voices of the socially disadvantaged in her documentaries. After watching an art exhibition held at the abandoned plant of Cort Cortek in 2012, the director captured the lives of the fired workers for seven years from 2012 to 2019. Although Sister J is a documentary about the labor movement, it is characterized by the fact that it focuses on the workers who enjoy cultural art such as plays, poems, and music. 

Yim Jaechun, who worked the longest among the laid-off workers at Cort Cortek and is also the main character of the documentary, made the guitars for 12 hours a day in her life, but she didn't know how to play them. Ironically, however, she could learn how to play the guitar while fighting for reinstatement and experience ‘the life of enjoying culture’ for the first time while playing on the stage. Director Lee Soojung also said, "I wanted to abandon the fixed images of labor movements in Korea. I hoped that the personal feelings and changes of the people fighting for the labor movement could be conveyed to the audience." 

Sister J, which consists mostly of black and white screens, reminds us of Charlie Chaplin's silent films. Director Lee Soojung also said, "When I saw the main character Yim Jaechun, the image of Charlie Chaplin came to mind. Also, the fact that Charlie Chaplin's films were also born during the Great Depression seemed to overlap with the laid-off workers who were wandering to get back their jobs." The faces of the people who endured the tough times and did not let go of their hope together to the end leave a deep lingering impression on me. Sister J won the Mecenat Award, the Grand Prize in the documentary competition section, at the Busan International Film Festival in 2020, etc.