Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Motivation behind the jury’s decision to hand the FIPRESCI award to Jerome Yoo’s debut feature MONGRELS, a Korean-Canadian coproduction.

Under Yoo’s adroit handling of multiple story lines, what could have been a run-of-the-mill evocation of the trials and tribulations of emigration becomes a meditation on the nature of grief, and in particular grief experienced in childhood. Many elements in the film are strikingly original, notably its representation of the relations between dogs and humans. The film’s logic is emotional and poetic. There are images that will be lodged in the memory long after Yoo has embarked on his second feature.