A Barefoot Dream

Kim Won-kang used to be a footballer; then he went into business and it failed. He goes to East Timor and opens a shop selling sporting goods there. Before long he sees that the people there have no money for the equipment. So he starts teaching the children to play football. The team he builds is soon playing in international tournaments. The film rests on a true story, that of Kim Shin-hwan, who went from Korea to East Timor. The account strikes no charitable pose; it starts from the man’s own dead end. Park Hee-soon and Ko Chang-seok appear in Kim Tae-gyun’s South Korean film of 2010, a hundred and twenty one minutes long.