SCREEN | Roaming 'A Great Divide' x VAFF 2023

"The poison was in their heart."

Vancouver Asian Film Festival

A Great Divide, helmed by Emmy-winning commercial director Jean Shim making her feature debut, tackles anti-Asian racism in Middle America during the pandemic. When an affluent Korean-American family moves from the Bay Area to the rural plains of small-town Wyoming, they experience culture shock surrounded by less-than-welcoming neighbours.

Starring Ken Jeong, Jae Suh Park, Emerson Min, and Miya Cech as the new and only non-white folks in town, their characters are met with resistance and overt xenophobia as they search for their own sense of belonging or slice of prosperity during a period of heightened suspicion and hostilities towards those deemed as outsiders.

Shim layers the film through clear dialogue, character details, and its vast midwestern scenery. A Great Divide tells its all-American tale through generational immigrant sacrifice. Written by Jeff Yang, Martina Nagel, and Shim herself, the script weaves in parallels of Korean history compared to contemporary issues of national division and distrust through the lens of pandemic trauma.

A Great Divide screens as the centrepiece narrative feature of the 2023 Vancouver Asian Film Festival on November 4th.


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