Treeless Mountain

Jin is six and her sister Bin is younger. They live in Seoul with their mother. One day the mother goes off to look for the father who left, and leaves the girls with their aunt out in the country. On her way out she hands Jin a piggy bank: when it is full, she will be back. Jin takes this literally. She and her sister catch grasshoppers in the fields, roast them, sell them by the roadside and put the coins in the bank. The bank fills up. The mother does not come. The film watches for when and how the children understand this. So Yong Kim directs the Korean film; ninety minutes, with Kim Hee-yeon as Jin and Kim Seong-hee as Bin, neither of them a professional actor. The camera stays at the children's eye level and mostly keeps adults' faces out of frame.