Never Forever

Gina Kim, 35mm, 104 min. (2007)

Originally conceived as a modern melodrama, Never Forever is an exploration of what happens when the foreign becomes familiar, and the familiar, foreign. Using the city of New York as a map of racial and class boundaries, the film focuses its unflinching eye upon a new sort of American identity crisis. Deeply encoded within preliminary questions of interracial relationships, science and religion and the female body, the transgression of class and ethnic boundaries, and the intricacies of human sexuality, lie more challenging concerns with desire, happiness, sacrifice, and regret.

By inhabiting the narrative and visual tropes of the melodramatic form, Never Forever attempts to subvert traditional notions of the American ideal, not from an external perspective, but wholly from within. The film takes a specific look at the Korean-American experience, with a particular emphasis on the ways in which immigration has changed, and the role religion has played in the assimilation of Koreans into the American mainstream.

Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, 2007.
Jury Prize, 33rd Deauville Festival of American Film. In theaters in France on 24 October 2007, and in the US beginning in New York in April 2008 [download PDF announcement].

 Website