The Way We Wait
(2020, 11’ 05”)
Desperately building against the inevitability of time, a restless young woman is awaiting another upcoming loss. But maybe more important things never seem to be told.
Soon after the director moves into her 22nd house, she gets a phone call that her Grandma, who lives far away, is in a critical condition. Elsewhere, a huge apartment made of sand is being constructed as the tide rolls in, while she belatedly tries to build a relationship with her Gran. As the camera sensitively observes how we wait for the upcoming days, the film embraces the fragility of life, full of uncertainty. -> excerpt
Desperately building against the inevitability of time, a restless young woman is awaiting another upcoming loss. But maybe more important things never seem to be told.
Soon after the director moves into her 22nd house, she gets a phone call that her Grandma, who lives far away, is in a critical condition. Elsewhere, a huge apartment made of sand is being constructed as the tide rolls in, while she belatedly tries to build a relationship with her Gran. As the camera sensitively observes how we wait for the upcoming days, the film embraces the fragility of life, full of uncertainty. -> excerpt
Soon after the director moves into her 22nd house, she gets a phone call that her Grandma, who lives far away, is in a critical condition. Elsewhere, a huge apartment made of sand is being constructed as the tide rolls in, while she belatedly tries to build a relationship with her Gran. As the camera sensitively observes how we wait for the upcoming days, the film embraces the fragility of life, full of uncertainty. -> excerpt
- Open City Doc Festival 2020, London, UK, Between Generations (UK Short Film Award Nominee) World Premiere
- DMZ Docs 2020, Goyang, KR, Short Competition
(Short Documentary Award Winner) ︎︎︎Programme Note
- Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2020, York, UK, Artists’ Film-memory(pp. 198~199) & Future Now Symposium 2021 by Aesthetica Magazine
- IDFA 2020, Amsterdam, NL, Student Documentary Competition
- Cairo Int'l Film Festival 2020, Cairo, EG, Cinema of Tomorrow (Special Jury Award&Youssef Chahin Award Nominee)
- AFI Docs 2021, Silver Spring, Maryland and Washington, D.C, US,
Short Film Competition
- Equinoxio Film Festival 2021, Bogota, CO / official competition - Celestial Bodies curatorial line
- Korean Film Archive, collected 2021
*The full film is available upon request. Please get in touch via email.
with Young-Ja Kim, Tae-Yeon Kang
Director, Producer and Editor: Ji-Yoon Park
Executive Producer: Emma Davie
Cinematographers: Julian Triandafyllou, Ji-Yoon Park
Sound Designer: Simon Howard
Sand Sculptor: Jack Handscombe


Film Introduction / Film Review
(The film intersects different types of footages, including her grandmother’s house that would soon disappear, her hospital, and the process of building a sandcastle that is not even likely to barely survive from the waves of the ocean. This whole process seems to be a desperate attempt to delay the moment of sadness in the near future as much as possible. It is a film about the coming loss, but at the same time, about hope as well. Losses are always with us even in this moment, but here, by properly looking and documenting the process, I wanted to share that life is not in such an emptiness as we think it is. It was an intent to connect the far future and the distant past, overcoming the current context of loss or uncertainty by leaning on that vastness of time. - director’s notes)
"The short film ‘The Way We Wait uses the traces of space and corporeal disappearance to talk about memory and vital fragility." (...) "Through narrative and visual conventions, JiYoon Park establishes the possibility of shaping time through the camera despite the inescapable course of nature: the tide that is approaching." (...) "Imagination, dreams, memories and daydreams are key factors for the creation of the image. From the dream story, the filmmaker weaves the images to expose the fragility of time and being." (...) "In a phenomenological narrative of accompaniment and the moment, grandmother and granddaughter support each other; the past no longer matters and the future will flow." (...)
- written by Daniela Ruiz Cerquera (Correspondencias Cine)





