So Yong Kim (b. 1971) is one of the most authentic and wholly original young filmmakers working in American independent cinema today. Kim has made two extraordinary autobiographically inspired features, In Between Days (2007) and Treeless Mountain (2008), that each distinctly channel her own experience of displacement (she was transplanted as a twelve-year old from Pusan to Los Angeles) to vividly render the intensities of youth. Avoiding predictable coming-of-age formulas, Kim's films instead adopt the distinct perspectives unique to children and adolescents, their potent way of seeing and intuitively relating to the surrounding world. Working predominantly with non-professional actors and minimal scripts, Kim creates remarkably nuanced character studies that balance verité intensity with a richness of poetic detail. Like the young girls who star within them, Kim´s film are shaped by an intimate and remarkably non-judgmental mode of observation that measures the weight of even the smallest gestures, capturing the subtlest shifts of emotion that define a relationship.

A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied painting, performance and video art, Kim has also worked as a producer on various films directed by her husband, frequent co-editor and creative partner, Bradley Rust Grey. The Harvard Film Archive is pleased to welcome So Yong Kim for a discussion of her two films and extraordinarily promising career.