Filmmaker Min Sook Lee says that she used her new documentary to give life back to herself and her mother. There Are No Words is Lee’s attempt to understand why her mother, Song Ji Lee, died by suicide more than 40 years ago. Sherien Barsoum and Chanda Chevannes produced the 98-minute documentary for the National Film Board of Canada.
“Silence and shame followed my mother’s suicide. I realized that if I didn’t make this film, a default narrative would take over that amounted to a permanent death of who she was and could have been,” Lee, an associate professor at OCAD University, said in an NFB news release. “I used this documentary to give life back to both of us.”
The 50th Toronto International Film Festival will present the world premiere.
According to the NFB, Lee’s film addresses the impact of trauma on memory. She turns the camera on herself as she reviews people and places of her childhood in Toronto and Hwasun, South Korea. She also devotes a great deal of attention to her 90-year-old father, who was working for Korea’s national intelligence agency when he met Lee’s mother.
Lee’s previous films include Migrant Dreams (2016), The Real Inglorious Bastards (2012), Tiger Spirit (2008), Hogtown (2005), and El Contrato (2003). As a scholar, she focuses on “counter narratives of resistance and feminist working-class cultural praxis”, according to her biography.
The Toronto International Film Festival will take place from September 4 to 14.
Helpful resources
If you are in a crisis, visit your local emergency department or call 911. Call or text 9-8-8 to reach the 9-8-8 Suicide Crisis Helpline. Phone 416-408-4357 (408-HELP) to reach Toronto Distress Centres. Learn more about the communities that make up Canada on the Toronto Spark website. Find the Toronto Spark on Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
