Tiger Spirit

Writer-director Min Sook Lee, who was only three when her family left Korea for Canada, grew up knowing little of her parents' homeland. Now pregnant with her first child, Lee travels back to Korea to learn more about the country in Tiger Spirit, which profiles South Korean families hoping to be reunited with relatives they left behind in the North more than 50 years before. Elderly interviewees recall their perilous journeys to the South, talk about relatives not heard from since the 1950s, and review letters from the Red Cross detailing who among their kin still survives in North Korea. The stories of deceased relations and canceled reunions are poignant (one family is finally allowed to meet with their remaining sibling in North Korea, an elderly brother, only to discover that he is growing senile and hardly knows them). Viewers will meet a man seeking evidence that tigers still live in the South Korean mountains (hence the title); defectors from North Korea who are struggling with discrimination and questions of identity; and a woman who escorts busloads of South Korean factory workers into North Korea every day. Tiger Spirit serves up a compelling portrait of people coping with life in a divided country, seeking symbols of national independence and strength, while continuing to harbor hopes for eventual reunification. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (M. Puffer-Rothenberg)