Interview: Jerome Yoo's dreamlike vision

Jerome Yoo bends precisely at 90 degrees, utters a greeting of "annyeong haseyo," then straightens up with a mischievous grin. Dressed in matching blue denim with a statement watch glinting on his wrist, he looks more like a college student on cultural exchange than a filmmaker on the festival circuit.

A promising voice in Canadian independent cinema for some time, the 31-year-old's artistic footprint extends well beyond his casual appearance. "Mongrels," Yoo's feature debut, had already collected significant accolades — winning at the Vancouver International Film Festival in British Columbia and securing the International Film Critics Prize at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia — before arriving at the Jeonju International Film Festival in North Jeolla Province for the film's Korean premiere.

"I still feel this deep sense of loneliness that I can't quite explain," Yoo says of his current stint in Korea, speaking with The Korea Herald at a cafe in Jeonju. He has relocated temporarily to Korea to direct commercials for corporate giants Naver and Hyundai, all the while developing a script for his next project under CJ ENM's mentorship program.

"I get along with people and have friends here, but there's still this division between me and them. Maybe it's morals, ethics or something else. I just feel a misalignment sometimes — me wanting to fit in but not being perfectly acceptable."

That sense of cultural liminality finds expression in "Mongrels," a triptych narrative chronicling a Korean immigrant family's settlement in rural British Columbia during the 1990s. The film follows widowed father Sonny Lee (Kim Jae-Hyun), who relocates with his teenage son Ha-joon (Nam Da-nu) and young daughter Ha-na (Jin Se-in) after being recruited to exterminate feral dogs threatening local livestock.

Yoo, who left South Korea at 1 year old and grew up in Vancouver, structures the film as three distinct chapters, each focusing on a different family member.

"I was inspired by 'Moonlight,'" he says, referring to Barry Jenkins' 2016 Oscar-winning coming-of-age story of a Black gay man. "Barry Jenkins explores a single character through three different phases of life. In that same way, I thought the immigration experience through different perspectives, through different generations, can be so vastly unique. I wanted each character to have a voice, an experience and show that not all immigrant experiences are the same."

The film's visual architecture evolves through its three movements. The first chapter's claustrophobic 4:3 aspect ratio visualizes Sonny's constrained worldview, while the second section expands both the frame and emotional palette as Ha-joon branches out to build connections with friends. By the final segment, Yoo employs a fully panoramic 16:9 widescreen frame filled with dreamlike imagery — a visual counterpoint to the earlier austerity.

"Ha-na lives in this world of childlike wonder," Yoo explains. "She doesn't fully comprehend the underlying intentions of the adult world. In some ways, she's living within a dream. I tried to heighten all her emotions — that's why things like the hair-dye scene seem so grotesque and absurd. Her coping mechanism exists within a fairy tale, which I slowly shatter as this child starts to understand life."

The film's most distinctive element is its central motif: the recurring image of wild dogs, which looms large as an ever-present existential threat to the community. Their howls pierce the night with ominous portent and create an almost postapocalyptic atmosphere within the film's period setting. Operating with a distinctly Kafkaesque sensibility, this conceit opens up rich allegorical possibilities for the film at large — about outsiders, about survival, about race relations and history — by dint of its sheer outlandishness.

"The dogs parallel the family," Yoo says. "They mirror outsiders, the misunderstood, immigrants just trying to find their way, trying to survive in unfamiliar lands. It's a dog-eat-dog world — that phrase was big in my mind while working on this. Even amongst immigrants, it's survival of the fittest."

The metaphor carries additional weight through historical stereotypes. "I have this complicated feeling growing up in Canada where I was sometimes teased with the stereotype of Koreans eating dogs," Yoo adds. "When I heard this as an elementary student, it left a deep impression."

Casting choices provide essential authenticity to Yoo's vision. The director bypassed Canada's Korean diaspora actors, seeking performers directly from Korea instead. "I knew that if I wanted to make it authentic, I needed actors who feel less comfortable in English," he explains. This search led him to Kim Jae-hyun, who had left acting behind many years back and now lives essentially off the grid in rural Ulsan.

"He didn't have a phone at the time, so we had to track him down through connections," Yoo says. "When I saw his photo, I knew immediately he was who I needed."

For the daughter Ha-na, Yoo cast first-time actor Jin Se-in, whose father had actually applied for the role of Sonny. "When we placed the camera in front of Se-in, I saw she has one of the most soulful looks — this face where you can project whatever emotion you want."

Another stylistic hallmark of the film manifests through ritual and folkloric iconography, which Yoo weaves extensively throughout the narrative. The director explains how he drew from childhood memories to create moments where Korean folk traditions punctuate the otherwise foreign setting.

"My grandmother would burn things in the house, put talismans on the front door to keep spirits away," he recalls. "Before we'd go hiking up a Canadian mountain, she'd say there's a Korean mountain spirit in this Canadian mountain."

As "Mongrels" screens for Korean audiences, a palpable nervousness washes over Yoo. "The Korean audience is the one I fear the most," he says. "I grew up abroad with very limited visits to Korea. It's this feeling of knowing I am Korean and wanting to be accepted."

Still, that vulnerability hardly seems to dampen his bold instincts as a filmmaker. "With 'Mongrels,' I was fortunate that no one was telling me what to do. I just wanted to throw s--- at the wall and see how it works," he says. "There's one sequence where we cut to this weird scene of dogs in the forest. My editor wanted to just stay on the character, but I wanted to take risks."

For all the boundary-pushing, Yoo remains fixed on one thing: that his wild impulses and creative risks still speak to something honest—and human.

"I hope that despite the surrealism, viewers find something in their gut they can relate to," he reflects. "If anything, I hope they accept these characters as people they might recognize in their own lives."