In 2011, French-Cambodian director Davy Chou was preparing to travel to the Busan International Film Festival to screen his feature debut, Golden Slumbers, when one of his closest friends called to say, “You’re going to South Korea? I’m coming with you.”
The friend was a young woman around Chou’s age — they were both in their 20s at the time — who was born in South Korea but had been adopted by a French couple and raised in Paris. Two days into their trip, she texted her Korean birth father and arranged a meeting, inviting Chou to tag along.
“She said she had met him briefly twice before, and it had not gone well. I said, ‘Sure, let’s go,’” Chou remembers.
