Winner of the Sundance Asian American Fellow 2023, Justin Kim WooSŏk is a name you should start paying attention to. Screened at TIFF, as part of the Rising Voices program, Sarajin tells the simple yet devastating story of a fisherman and his family coping with a changing climate and watching their life fade just like the snow crabs in Alaska.
We sat down with Justin Kim WooSŏk to discuss everything from climate change to grief and hope.
Screen Speck: Firstly, thank you so much for talking with me about this stunning, delicate piece. As soon as I learned the meaning of “Sarajin” and its theme, I was eager to watch it. I’m delighted that I did. What was your main inspiration for focusing on Korean fishermen in Alaska and the forced change of their way of life provoked by the changing climate?
Justin Kim WooSŏk: Thank you for watching the film! When I was writing the script for Sarajin, I happened to be spending time on the East Coast of South Korea, in cities like Gangneung, Sokcho, and Yangyang. I would walk around the fish markets, hang by the docks, and was able to join a few fishermen fishing in the East Sea. It was around this time that reports that the Alaskan snow crab fishery, one of the largest and most important in the United States, was set to close for the first time ever, that 10 billion snow crabs disappeared and no one was sure where they went. I was intrigued by the fact this huge fishery collapsed, and that no one was talking about it. I started to write my script then. I flew to Alaska not long after to do my own research and observed fishermen working in the Gulf of Alaska. These experiences inspired me to write this story.
Screen Speck: One of my favorite aspects of Sarajin is its intimate ambiance. I felt like I was granted the honor of sharing a slice of a life far from my own while connecting with the struggles of the Kim family. Can you tell me more about your experience shooting in Alaska, sharing that slice of life with locals and the crew?
Kim WooSŏk: It was pretty incredible to shoot in Alaska. We went up in the wintertime. It was cold, although locals told us this was the least amount of snow that they’ve seen in years (another signal of how climate change was affecting the region). We shot a lot of B-roll of the docks, the mountains, the canneries, the streets. And although it didn’t make it in the final film we shot on a 100 ft. boat following a team of fishermen as part of the research process. We filmed them catching 300,000 lbs of fish in an ice storm. It gave us a deeper appreciation for the incredible work involved in getting seafood onto America’s tables and the sensitivity of the environment in which the seafood was caught.
Screen Speck: I think that the media tends to highlight the catastrophic consequences of climate change while ironically forgetting the direct human cost of such an immense issue. To me, Sarajin felt like a purposeful reminder of the conundrums being imposed in so many lives already, some of them generational and cultural. We see the Kim family facing some of these issues, the concerns about Gaeun’s future and Jaejeong being ashamed for not honoring Korean family traditions. We see DongSu himself witnessing his professional life disappearing because of fossil fuel CEOs and lobbyists he’ll never meet. It’s heartbreaking. Are climate activists, mainly in cities like LA, New York and London, not paying enough attention to the Kim families?
Kim WooSŏk: I do believe that by focusing on the intimate, we can better understand the bigger picture. We have to keep in mind both scopes at the same time, climate change on the level of continents and on the level of an individual family. I hope this film encourages viewers to think about the families who are affected first by climate change and the disruptions we are seeing at the beginning of the supply chains that connect us to the ocean and provide food, both at home and in restaurants.
Screen Speck: I’m a big fan of the title. We’re much like the crabs, disappearing with them. Forced to leave just like the Kim family, lifelong immigrants. What was the main loss, the main form of grief you wanted to depict in this film?
Kim WooSŏk: We were hoping to capture the grief of leaving something behind, whether it is a way of life or a new home. I was interested in creating an immigrant story about the in-between places, the many steps that are common in immigration journeys, and the emotions and choices present in the window of time before we have to leave someplace. And then, of course, on the underside of that grief is a fragile kind of hope.
Screen Speck: “The ocean will never fail us” is a gut-wrenching line. It’s undoubtedly my favorite quote from the film, I don’t think I’ll forget it anytime soon. Where does DongSu’s belief come from? And have we failed the ocean? Have we failed ourselves?
Kim WooSŏk: It’s an old adage, one he probably heard from his father who was also a fisherman. On one hand I think DongSu’s belief comes from an understanding of the vicissitudes of a fisherman’s life, there are good seasons and bad seasons, but the ocean is too big to fail. On the other hand, I think it comes from the difficulty of coming to terms with the fact that the ocean his father fished is no longer the ocean he is working with. And yes, I do think we have failed the ocean, and in so doing, failed ourselves. The post-industrial revolution and late capitalist mentality of take, take, take is deeply embedded in the way we approach nature and in resource extraction. And we’re still expanding invasive practices, for example governments right now are debating whether to open up the ocean for deep sea mining, in places like the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, without knowing entirely the long term effects this will have in a type of environment – the deep sea – we know little about.
Screen Speck: Your work focuses on crucial contemporary themes: loss, displacement and our relationship with the planet amidst the pains of climate change. I know you’re currently developing your first feature and I’m looking forward to watching it already. Through which perspective do you plan to address climate change in your upcoming project?
Kim WooSŏk: I hope to address climate change by following characters who embody different perspectives on how to handle the crisis: reversing the damage, using technology to preserve it, and nihilism.
Screen Speck: I profoundly believe we need more climate stories being depicted in visual formats. Watching your film was a beautifully aching experience that makes me hopeful about the role of cinema in the fight for climate justice. What does Sarajin have to say to its audiences about our relationship with the planet?
Kim WooSŏk: I think Sarajin is asking us to consider that the climate disaster has arrived and is well underway and its effects and affects are only going to accelerate, we have to organize locally and put pressure on our governments and companies to stop fossil fuel extraction and consumption, replace industrial food production with sustainable methods, and radically change the incentives in our culture that encourage us to accumulate and consume.
Read Screen Speck’s review of Sarajin here.
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