Overseas
Sung-A Yoon
In the Philippines, women are sent abroad to work as domestic workers or nannies. To do this, they frequently leave their own children behind, before throwing themselves into the unknown. In one of the many training centres for domestic work that can be found in the Philippines, a group of trainees are preparing to face both homesickness and the possible forms of abuse lying ahead. During role playing exercises, they alternatively play both the roles of the employee and that of the employer. Bordering on fiction, Overseas brings to light the question of modern servitude in our globalised world, while emphasising the determination of these women, their sisterhood, and the strategies they find to face the ordeals that await them in the near future.
Image : Thomas Schirra
Sound : Kwinten van Laethem
Editing : Dieter Diependaele
Music : Frederic Verrieres
Sound : Kwinten van Laethem
Editing : Dieter Diependaele
Music : Frederic Verrieres
Production : Iota Production et Les Films de l’oeil sauvage
International sales: CAT&Docs
International sales: CAT&Docs
Sung-A Yoon is a French woman, born in South Korea and living in Brussels. She graduated from INSAS. Between 2001 and 2011, she directed ten short movies mostly screened in exhibitions. Switching to fiction, in 2008 she finished her short movie (Et dans mon coeur j'emporterai) And I'll Keep in My Heart that was selected for the Cannes Film Festival – cinéfondation. In 2012, she left to look for her father, and ended up with her first documentary Full of Missing Links.
“The role-playing exercises that we see in the film are part of a stress management class and they are supposed to prepare the women to deal with cases of abuse and with the worst conflicting interactions. The instructor was inspired by her own experiences to design the scenes. When I discovered this, as a filmmaker, I was immediately intrigued. For the film, the ‘fiction' role-playing scenes, through the stories they carried with them, they allowed their intimate thoughts to circulate freely, their internal conflicts and contradictory emotions to come out when reflecting on their future sacrifices.” (Sung-A Yoon)
“The role-playing exercises that we see in the film are part of a stress management class and they are supposed to prepare the women to deal with cases of abuse and with the worst conflicting interactions. The instructor was inspired by her own experiences to design the scenes. When I discovered this, as a filmmaker, I was immediately intrigued. For the film, the ‘fiction' role-playing scenes, through the stories they carried with them, they allowed their intimate thoughts to circulate freely, their internal conflicts and contradictory emotions to come out when reflecting on their future sacrifices.” (Sung-A Yoon)