I have to make it as personal as possible

Anthony Shim joins Camilla Andini (“June”) and Pablo Larraín (“Jackie”) with a historic win at the Platform Award at the Toronto International Film Festival for his feature debut, Riceboy Sleeps. In this sober slice of life, he tells a 2-part story about a single immigrant mother, So-young (played by newcomer Choi Seung-yun), who survives in the heart of Canada with her son Dong-hyun (Dohyun Noel Hwang) in the 90s those years. Early on, the two learn to navigate the social maze of being East Asian in a predominantly white town. They shift their origins – and thus, their dignity – bit by bit to assimilate it. Replaced gimbap with sandwiches; exchanging Korean names with English; turn the other cheek instead of hitting back. In the first half of ‘Riceboy Sleeps’, the all-too-familiar seeds of inner self-loathing are sown and flourished in front of silver screen viewers.

As Dong-hyun grows up (with the teenage version played by Ethan Hwang), he – like his childhood hero, Michael Jackson – desperately tries to adjust to whiteness. He dyes his hair blonde and wears blue contact lenses; he gets into fights, drugs and parties despite his mother’s dismay. Seo-young, on the other hand, finds love again, but also a growing tumor in her pancreas. As their fragile life in Canada threatens to fall apart, the two decide to take a trip to Korea. They pack their bags and head to the rolling hills of Gangwon Province to revisit Dong-hyun’s father one last time.

Although the story and his own autobiography don’t exactly match (Shim’s parents immigrated together, for example), Shim notes that there are similarities—and they’re crucial to making the film both universal and unique. “The writing process was quite challenging,” admits Shim. “There have been so many versions of this type of film – but if I’m going to do it, I have to make it as personal as possible.”

The devil is in the details, he points out, starting with the 1990s image itself. Unlike Sirk-ian melodrama, Shim takes a step back and records the family in multiple long takes. This observational technique complements the noticeably grainy texture that comes with shooting on 16mm film. He points out that this is to tap into a sense of nostalgia, similar to films like Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010) and Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015). “Our childhood photographs often take the form of printed films and photographs – and are often kept in albums. There’s something about looking at a childhood photo album that evokes certain feelings,” he says. “I’d love for people to watch this film and feel like they’re looking at a travel photo album that evokes similar feelings.”

A certain rawness also rules the film, thanks to a cast of fresh faces. Both Dong-hyun were new to the set, he notes, and Choi Seung-yoon had only danced before. “Finding her was a long, hard, difficult process,” he laughs. It is looking for Korean women between the ages of 25 and 50 in both North America and the peninsula, looking for their screen presence and Korean language skills. Choi Seung-yoon, he recalls, came in as a “wildcard” at the last minute – but “it was obvious she was the right person”.

However, coordinating them was not easy. Shim, who has been an acting teacher for ten years, treated his directing like a theater production. Working with minors primarily limits their hours per day. Shooting valuable film added another limitation. Working with new actors was a whole other pickle. With 1 week of training, 3 weeks of rehearsals and extensive blocking with Christopher Lu, his director of photography, Shim said there wasn’t much directing on set. “Everyone showed up ready. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Go to the set. Take two, three and then we had to move on. He leaned back and smiled at the memory. “It was amazing. The actors were perfect. I collected the scenes in [the sequence they were shot] because I didn’t want to hide anything. I wanted to keep the performances as organic and real as possible.”

For the latest segment of “Riceboy Sleeps,” Shim elaborates that filming in Korea — especially during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic — brought its challenges. The cast and crew were quarantined for two weeks and had to adjust to Korean film protocols. They also had to transport everything to a remote town in the southern tip of the country. But there was a certain charm to choosing to shoot outside of a big city like Seoul. “My family line goes back to Wonijeon, about fourteen generations,” Shim explains to me. “[When we were shooting there,] curious viewers would be intrigued that we were filming in their neighborhood. Because I had ties to the area, I would tell them my grandfather’s name and someone would always know who he was. Finding local actors was also easier because of Shim’s ties to the locality, preserving the accent and mannerisms present in the film.

Despite these intimate connections, Shim insists that he doesn’t want the hyper-specificity of “Riceboy Sleeps” to lead him to make films only about his cultural and ethnic origins. He comes closer to the work of Kogonada (“After Yang”), another diasporic Korean who photographed outside of a Korean specific identity. His next project, he says, is still a big secret. He hints that it will have something to do with the Chinatowns of the North American West Coast. But in the meantime, before moving on to his next film, he must first show “Riceboy Sleeps” to his mother.

“Riceboy Sleeps” played at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the Platform Award.