Synopsis

A shaman mother, Shin Jeonghwa, who gives her daughter daily warnings based on divinations each morning, decides to carry out a Daesudaemyeong ritual, a shamanistic rite that transfers fate and life, to ward off the impending misfortune threatening her daughter Shin Yujeong and her daughter’s friend. However, on the very day the ritual is to be performed, Yujeong’s fate suddenly becomes unreadable. After a heated argument with her mother, Yujeong leaves for school earlier than usual. There, upon encountering her friend, she unexpectedly grabs her and begins apologizing without explanation…

Director's Comment

Through a shaman mother who lives a life devoted to the divine and a daughter whose sense of agency gradually erodes under that mother’s influence, this work seeks to portray a fragment of human desire and the cyclical trap of taking and being taken, experienced by individuals who have lost autonomy through others. Although the narratives of the mother and daughter unfold in different ways, they ultimately descend together. The daughter longs to escape her mother, yet in moments of crisis she unconsciously turns back to her for support, eventually collapsing from within. The mother, aware on some level that she is mentally suffocating her daughter, nevertheless refuses to relent and forces the ritual to proceed, ultimately becoming the one who pushes her daughter to the breaking point. Both characters arrive at the same outcome, forming an identical trajectory of downfall. This parallel descent, brought about through structures of control over life, is staged as a shared collapse. The film employs the Korean ritual of Daesudaemyeong, a rite of substituting life and fate, as well as the chicken required for the ritual, as a central metaphor by linking it to the daughter. Although the ritual is forcibly imposed to protect the daughter from misfortune strongly transferred from her friend, the inevitable death of the chicken required by the ritual is rendered both psychologically and visually, heightening the irony at the heart of the narrative.

Staff

Producer KWON Donghyeon, CHOI Donil, KIM Hyeonjo, KIM Dosik, LEE Yulgu, LEE Seunghoon, KANG Chanwoo, KIM Sion

Scenario/Storyboard/Character Design/Lay Out/Editing HAN Minji

BG Design KANG Chanwoo, HWANG Minseon, OH Dogeong, LEE Haejin, HAN Minji

Animation KANG Daeun, KIM Dayeon, YOON Eunbi, KIM Dami, HAN Minji,

Camera KANG Chanwoo, KIM Jihyae, RYU Hyomin, MIN Seongmin

Effect KANG Chanwoo, KIM Jihyae, RYU Hyomin, MIN Seongmin, WOO Hyemin

Sound LEE Gayeon, BAEK Chaehyeon

Music LEE Sangjun

Voice WON Okhwa, KIM Ayeon, PARK Juho, JEON Ahyeon

Program Note

Daesudaemyeong — a shamanic ritual (代) of taking on another's lifespan (壽) and fate (命) in their place. The contradiction of an act of killing becoming a sacred rite generates the tension that runs through the entire film. Whose fate is bound for what, and who ends up carrying whose lifespan in their place — the relationships between these characters, tightly knotted together since long ago, feel, like a gut ritual already set in motion, nearly impossible to undo.

LEE Hyejung