Forget Me Not 2019
Distributed by Grasshopper Film, 12 East 32nd St., 4th Floor, New York, NY 10016
Produced by Monica Hellström
Directed by Sun Hee Engelstoft
Streaming, 83 mins
High School - General Adult
Adoption; Human Rights; Reproductive Rights
Date Entered: 12/12/2022
Reviewed by Gisèle Tanasse, University of California BerkeleyIn Forget Me Not, director Sun Hee Engelstoft, immerses the viewer in the shared sorrows of young Korean mothers contemplating adoption, and the hundreds of thousands of Korean adoptees scattered across the world. Through the lens of Aesuhwon, Dr. Im Ae Duck’s home for “unwed mothers,” we witness the profound suffering of these young women (mostly children themselves) as they navigate questions of grave lifelong importance, questions they know will likely never be answered to any satisfaction.
Engelstoft brilliantly lays bare the community pressures that trap these young mothers in an impossible situation, where gossip and perceived judgment of friends, family and imagined future husbands, conspire through the legal rights of grandparents, to traumatically break the bonds between the mothers and their newborns. Engelsoft frames the film in her own adoption story, filled with mystery and grief, bringing a very personal connection to this documentary feature, which serves as a compelling call to compassion, and a novel argument in favor of young women’s rights.
The film is highly recommended for International Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, Human Rights, Parenting, and Korean Studies. It would serve particularly well in classrooms to introduce a unique take on women’s right to self-determination, lending a nuance to discussions of women’s reproductive rights, and also showcasing our profound global failures to support the young and expectant, as well as adoptees and birth parents. The film could also pair well with Naomi Kawase’s Japanese feature film True Mothers, which provides a moving and profound fictionalized treatment of mothers, brought together through a similar home for “unwed mothers.”
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