“Approved for Adoption” Film Screening

"Approved for Adoption" Film Screening

Sunday, February 25, 2018 - 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Whitney Humanities Center See map
53 Wall Street
New Haven, CT 06511

Directed by Jung Henin & Laurent Boileau (GKIDS, 2012, 74 min. DCP)

This remarkable animated documentary traces the unconventional upbringing of the filmmaker Jung Henin, one of thousands of Korean children adopted by Western families after the end of the Korean War. It is the story of a boy stranded between two cultures. Sepia-toned animated vignettes – some humorous and some poetic – track Jung from the day he first meets his new blond siblings, through elementary school, and into his teenage years, when his emerging sense of identity begins to create fissures at home and ignite the latent biases of his adoptive parents.

The filmmaker tells his story using his own animation intercut with snippets of super-8 family footage and archival film. The result is an animated memoir like no other: clear-eyed and unflinching, humorous and wry, and above all, inspiring in the capacity of the human heart.


Introduction by Xavi Sawada, Ph.D. Student in Film & Media Studies and East Asian Languages & Literatures, Yale University. 

This screening is presented as part of an ongoing film series entitled “Monsters in Motion: Spring Film Series on Animated Monsters and/in East Asia.”


Still image and synopsis courtesy of GKIDS, INC.

Sponsored by the Council on East Asian Studies with support from the Yale Film Study Center
Tags: 
Region: 
Korea, Transregional