"Although it's quiet, this film has a lot of elements that make you laugh"

 Scattered Night, which depicts the story of Sumin, an elementary school kid whose parents are about to divorce, is a film co-directed by Lee Jihyoung and Kim Sol, who majored in directing at the Graduate School in Dankook University.

The movie Scattered Night is about Sumin (Moon Seungah), an elementary school kid whose parents are about to divorce. Like the chilly and dark living room in the broad light of day, the child has no choice but to look at her scattered family and the fragmented hearts. The film, which carefully captures the complex psychology of the main character Sumin and the other characters, won the Grand Prize and the Best Acting Award at the 20th Korean Film Competition. Let's hear about the movie Scattered Night from the two directors who studied movies together and co-directed the first feature film after majoring in directing in the 7th class at the Graduate School of Cinematic Content at Dankook University. 

Q. I heard that you two could co-direct by Director Kim Sol's suggestion.

= Kim Sol: Director Lee Jihyoung's scenario was selected to get production support from the school. I was also preparing my scenario at the time. Director Geography, Director Kim Deokjin of Education, Director Yoon Danbi of Moving On, and I are schoolmates, and we were having scenario meetings once a week. While working with each other at school, we talked about difficulties in making movies, and I suggested that we should co-direct this one. I thought Jihyoung's scenario was very impactful when it ended with asking questions at the end. After careful consideration, we decided to co-direct the film.

= Lee Jihyoung: I began dealing with films in earnest while studying in graduate school. Even after my scenario was selected for the production support project, I was a bit overwhelmed because there was no system to lead the project. So when Director Sol suggested it, I thought it would be nice to combine each of our strengths and direct the film. Since it was our graduation project, we had to finish it in time, and I thought we could make it faster and more impactful if we did it together. After the team was formed, we exchanged opinions a lot, and there was some reinforcement in terms of characters. As the writer of the scenario, every scene seemed to be important to me because I had been harboring the work for a long time, but after talking together, we got rid of some less important parts, and I think it made the scenario much better.

Scattered Night naturally follows the emotions we face rather than dramatizing them with exaggerated gazes.

Q. What parts did you two charge on the spot?

= Lee Jihyoung: From the pre-production process to storyboard, casting, and location, we made every decision one by one together. After discussing what to film on the spot and what the characters' feelings are, I focused more on the actors' performances, and Director Sol was in charge of looking at the screen and image production in more depth. However, it is hard to say that we had clear roles to play because there were many aspects where roles were mixed while directing.

Q. Director Lee Jihyoung, what made you start this story?

= Lee Jihyoung: I was particularly interested in family stories, especially the feelings that occur when family relationships or characters collide. Thinking I would make a movie about a family, I carried the subject matter in my heart since the first semester of my freshman year. At first, thinking of an adult protagonist, I planned to focus on what would happen when family members who had been scattered met after a long time. Then, I started to revise one by one with the idea of creating emotional depth. It seems to have taken about a year for me to get into the feelings of a child.

Q. There are no scenes where conflicts are highlighted nor nostalgia is stimulated. To me, it seems to be wary of emotional drift.

= Lee Jihyoung: I'm not good at watching crying scenes or pouring out emotions on TV. I think it's hard for me to see such strong emotions. Based on that personality, I think I chose to make a case with nothing important. In addition, the movie itself has the concept of events and stories that can happen in any family. So rather than dramatizing it, I thought we should weave the emotions we face naturally.

= Kim Sol: In the early scenario, Sumin asks her mother why she broke up with her father, and her mother answers. But, in the revised version, instead of answering the question, the scene only shows the mother is thinking about it. In that way, director Jihyoung revised the scenario in a way that gives more feelings through acting production rather than explaining.

In Scattered Night, there are so many scenes that children are mature whereas adults seem immature.

Q. There are not many scenes that show children's feelings in the movie, so the two children look more mature than their peers. What was your intention to describe the children?

= Lee Jihyoung: There are scenes where the children are mature while the adults look immature. When mom and dad announce their divorce, the kids are sitting on the floor as if they were begging for forgiveness for their fault. I thought there would be no distinction between children and adults in front of the situation where the family is broken. If kids feel that they should not disappoint their parents, they have no choice but to be wary of their parents and to examine the psychology of their parents. These psychological aspects seem to have resulted in the children being portrayed as a lot mature.

Q. In the film, mom is a star instructor in an academy and dad is a museum curator. The parents' jobs are unique, and their jobs are also closely linked to the characters and the plot. So, I am curious about the background of the job setting.

= Lee Jihyoung: I thought I should go with a working mother who's ambitious for her career. The concept of the mother giving lectures was set from the beginning. Since my mother also teaches middle and high school students, I could borrow the idea easily. Watching my mother taking care of her students, I felt some sense of alienation from time to time. Since the movie is about children's anxiety, the mother's job seemed to be ideal to project such anxiety to some extent. On the other hand, the father was set as a less ambitious character than the mother. While revising the scenario, I found out that Sol's father is a curator. So I thought it would be fun to change the father's job in that direction because the contrast between the two jobs was quite interesting. If the mother is a working mom pioneering her career, the father's job is to study lifestyles in the past. Those jobs contrast clearly on that point, and I chose them because they seemed to be two jobs that could reflect the current situation of the scattering family.

Q. Tell me the films you referred to for this movie.

= Lee Jihyoung: Director Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale is a cold, cynical, but witty film. Scattered Night also flows quietly, but I think there are many points that make you laugh. I think The Squid and the Whale have changed the way I watch this movie. Watching The Kid with a Bike, directed by the Dardenne brothers, I tried to learn many things, such as the style of filming with one character at the center, focusing on children's emotions, and trying to capture children's emotions vividly. I'm a big fan of the Dardenne brothers' movies. Also, I looked up Loveless, directed by Andrei Zvyagintsev. This movie also approaches the parents' divorce with a cynical atmosphere and a cold tone, and I think I was influenced by it.

Director Kim Sol and Director Lee Jihyoung replied, "We thought we could make the movie faster and more impactful if we combined our strengths well." 

Q. Director Kim Sol majored in sociology, and Director Lee Jihyoung majored in nursing at university. How did you start studying directing with the dream of becoming a movie director?

= Kim Sol: I majored in sociology and participated in a photography club when I was an undergraduate. At that time, I was only interested in box office movies as a common audience. For the liberal arts class, I took Understanding Movies 101, and I was fascinated by finding out how directors set up scenes and organize screens. So, instead of preparing for employment, I enrolled in the Hankyoreh Film School because I thought directing movies should be fun and exciting. That's how I entered graduate school because movie directing was a lot more fun than I thought, and I wanted to try it more.

= Lee Jihyoung: I was a big fan of movies to some extent since I was a student, but I didn't think I should work in this field. In high school, I didn't have many chances to write something because I studied natural science, getting farther away from movies. I majored in nursing at university, but I wasn't as much interested in it as I thought. After wandering for a while, I concluded that I should think about my future seriously once I made money and stabilized to a certain extent. After a few years of work, I wondered what I was making money for. I looked back on my childhood and realized I constantly liked movies and was interested in writing stories. I always had some energy I wanted to release, and I was eager to figure out what it was. So, I just registered for an independent film workshop blindly. Once I tried it, I noticed that I was interested in it. I prepared for graduate school, thinking I should learn to write stories more and study images. I think I've looked for a means to express something because I have many thoughts all the time.

Q. What movies do you want to make?

= Kim Sol: I'm still in the process of figuring it out. I've been thinking about what movies I want to make and what I really like to do for 2 years since Scattered Night was released, but I don't think I've found any answers yet. For now, I'm going to find something that interests me and continue to do what I can. I'm more interested in stories that can happen in everyday life than in big discourse movies.

= Lee Jihyoung: I've enjoyed realism films such as Dardenne brothers', Director Lee Changdong's, and Director Asghar Farhadi's. As I have experienced many things and watch more movies little by little, I feel that I am also interested in stories that follow genre grammar, such as thrillers and comedies. Balancing a story in realism and thriller movies seems to fit me well at the moment, but I'm not sure about that 100% yet. I think I'm in the process of pursuing what I want to express.