Release of the film “Winter in Sokcho”, based on the bestselling novel by Elisa Shua Dusapin – rts.ch

Eight years ago, “Winter in Sokcho” was published by Zoé, signed by the Jura writer Elisa Shua Dusapin. A first novel which shook up the scene of French-speaking literature, before being exported beyond. Translated into more than 30 languages, the book has been awarded numerous Swiss and international prizes, including the prestigious National Book Award in 2021.

After a theatrical adaptation, it is now on the big screen that we can discover the story of this young woman – called Soo-ha in the film – who lives in the small seaside town of Sokcho in South Korea.

At 23, she leads a routine life, between her visits to her mother, a fish seller, and her relationship with her boyfriend. The arrival of Yan Kerrand, a French comic strip artist, in the small boarding house where she works, awakens in her questions about her identity and about her French father about whom she knows almost nothing. While winter numbs the city, Soo-ha and Yan Kerrand will observe each other, gauge each other, try to communicate with their own means and forge a fragile bond.

Not an obvious choice for Elisa Shua Dusapin

Accepting that her book be adapted for the cinema was not easy for the writer who had refused several proposals which envisaged telling this story as a sort of romance at the end of the world between two strangers. “It was my worst nightmare, because it’s not that at all,” she explains on the Vertigo show on December 12.

But when she hears about an adaptation project proposed by a Franco-Japanese director, she watches one of his short films and is shocked by what she sees. She envisions that he might be the right person to make this transition from page to screen. “I was able to completely let go from the moment I heard Koya talking to me about his reading of the book, it resonated so intimately within me,” she remembers.

Questions about identity and crossbreeding

For his part, director Koya Kamura, whose first feature film it is, admits that reading “Winter in Sokcho” was “like an electric shock”. I was working on another script that was about abandonment and I was getting bogged down in writing. And there, I read this novel which also talks about this theme and I discover a kind of reverse shot to what I was trying to tell. And there were also questions of identity and mixed race. The narrator is Franco-Korean and I am Franco-Japanese, so obviously there are common questions and resonance with my personal history.”

Roschdy Zem’s “yes”

Koya Kamura asked Elisa Shua Dusapin to participate in writing the script, but she preferred to give him free reign. On the other hand, she went to the set of the film for three weeks – she also made a brief appearance there. A moving moment where she discovered the characters of her novel suddenly embodied by actors and actresses.

To play the role of Soo-ha, the director’s choice fell on Bella Kim, a model making her film debut. As for the designer Yan Kerrand, it is the Franco-Moroccan actor Roschdy Zem (César for best actor for his role in “Roubaix, une lumiere” in 2020) who agreed to play him, to the greatest happiness of the director : “I found that he had traits in common with the character and I had him in mind throughout the writing of the screenplay,” he explains. But I never imagined that Roschdy would agree to play in my first film. When he said yes, we had a bit of pressure, because the project was taking on another dimension,” he recalls.

Animated images inserted into the film

In his film, Koya Kamura chose to insert animated images created by Agnès Patron. A way to understand what’s going on in Soo-ha’s head. “I didn’t want to use a voice-over which could give the impression of something already digested and analyzed. I wanted something much more raw. The animation allows you to have these more or less abstract impulses at the beginning and more and more figurative during the film, in order to have an insight into this interiority and this intimacy of the character”, he further specifies.

A choice also echoes the communication between the two protagonists of the film which is done more through drawing than through language.

Comments collected by Anne-Laure Gannac and Julie Evard

Web adaptation: Andréanne Quartier-la-Tente

“Winter in Sokcho”, by Koya Kamura with Bella Kim and Roschdy Zem. To be seen on French-speaking screens since December 18, 2024.