About This Film
Lee Kwan-am's 1996 family drama “Two Families in Haeun-dong” is one of the better known North Korean movies outside of the land of its creation, both for being written by the award-winning young writer Ung Yong-yui, and for being one of the few movies from the North shown at numerous South Korean movie festivals and even broadcasted on TV.
Synopsis
The film follows the life of the families of two engineer-scientists from the eponymous neighborhood in Pyongyang, North Korea. Like many movies with such a premise, the story begins with one of the families moving in at the building. Though the two families are superficially very similar – the fathers are scientists, working for the betterment of their nation, their children are similar age, and the mothers are hard-working and accomplished at their respective fields, one is a tour guide, the other, famous singer – it soon turns out that there is a vast difference between them.
