Johnny Ma’s
THE MOTHER AND THE BEAR
2024 / Color / English and Korean with English Subtitles / 100 minutes / Not Rated
World Premiere: Toronto International Film Festival

In a snow-swept Winnipeg, school teacher Sumi (Leere Park) is hospitalized after a fall. On hearing the news, her anxious mother, Sara (Kim Ho-jung, Revivre), flies over from Seoul to be with her comatose daughter — and once Sara sets herself up in the young woman’s apartment, she discovers she doesn’t really know Sumi at all.

Sara despairs about her daughter’s single status, so she immediately starts catfishing the pleasant Min (Jonathan Kim) to be Sumi’s boyfriend — once she wakes up, of course — and also gets unwittingly entangled with Min’s estranged father, Sam (Won-Jae Lee), who runs a Korean restaurant in the city. As Sam and the widowed Sara connect over their mutual melancholies, a chance meeting with Sumi’s co-worker Amaya (Amara Pedroso Saquel, Cha Cha Real Smooth) leads Sara to learn more about the life from which her daughter has chosen to exclude her.

In a departure from his previous films, filmmaker Johnny Ma (Old Stone) embarks in a bold new direction, using suburban Winnipeg as the stage for a unique mash-up of genres – a stylized, whimsical narrative of crossed wires, secret lives, and conflicting agendas.

“A charming and whimsical story brimming with adventure and self-discovery. Watching Kim Ho-jung on screen is a true delight” – Kristy Strouse, Film Inquiry

“A rare and lovely thing…a coming-of-age story for a woman in her 50s. Kim Ho-jung is delightful.” – Taylor Gates, Collider