Treeless Mountain

Opening this week:

Treeless Mountain, directed by So Young Kim

The adults in Treeless Mountain do not appear purposefully cruel, though they often appear as cold, remote and mysterious as the stars in the sky. The film, the second feature from the Brooklyn-based writer and director So Yong Kim, tells a quiet, carefully observed story about two young girls — 6-year-old Jin and her 4-year old sister, Bin — who become orphans of a kind after their mother leaves them with relatives. Shot in South Korea, where Ms. Kim was born (her family immigrated to America when she was 12), it has the tang of real life, though this is realism that has been filtered through 60 or so years of world art cinema. — Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

The full New York Times review is here, and they ran an article about her and her husband last week.