Private Project

Above the Mist

A young man seeks an assisted suicide with an illegal agency in South Korea.

  • Gabriel Galand
    Director
  • Laura Katz
    Writer
  • Gabriel Galand
    Producer
  • Yoon Chan-Ho
    Key Cast
  • Gabriel Galand
    Cinematography / Editing
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Drama, Thriller
  • Runtime:
    7 minutes 40 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    March 20, 2016
  • Production Budget:
    1,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Korea, Republic of
  • Country of Filming:
    Korea, Republic of
  • Language:
    Korean
  • Shooting Format:
    Blackmagic 4K
  • Aspect Ratio:
    1:85
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • KIXFF
    Seoul
    Korea, Republic of
    September 1, 2018
    Best Korean Short Film
  • Headline International Film Festival

    Canada
    December 23, 2017
    Award of Excellence
  • Canada Shorts - Canadian & International Short Film Fest.

    December 9, 2017
    Award of Distinction
  • Romania
    Romania
    April 6, 2016
    Romanian Premiere
    Best Editing
Director Biography - Gabriel Galand

Gabriel Galand is an award-winning writer/director from France with experience in commercial and narrative filmmaking in various countries, including the United Kingdom, South Korea, Switzerland and now Canada. Coming from a background of cinematography, Gabriel’s films mix different genres with cross cultural issues such as death, dealing with loss and other social subjects. After more than a hundred and forty selections in the festival circuit, Gabriel’s work landed distribution deals in North America, Europe and East Asia. Now pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Film Production at the University of British Columbia, Gabriel is conducting research on the feature-length screenplay he’s currently developing.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

To whom it may concern,

I would like to submit my most recent short film, "Above the Mist" to your festival, a drama/thriller dealing with South Korea's biggest struggle: being the country with the highest suicide rate in the world.

After living a year in Seoul, a beautiful, clean and modern city, I was shocked to hear so many people committed suicide. It is in fact estimated that around forty Koreans kill themselves every day, and most often in a violent way. It is said the high rate is due to stifling poverty in the elderly, with many of them feeling out of touch with the country's modern culture and economy. But it's also a big problem amongst the youth who are facing a strong social pressure to succeed and uncertainties about the economic future.

My film is a reflection of this social issue but also an advocation for a stronger fight against suicide. I believe Korea should invest more time into this issue, whether it's in poverty relief or offering remedies to persons suffering from physical and/or mental pain.

As a director, I first envisioned this film as a fantasy but decided to go instead for a more crude approach, developing it into a drama/thriller. For this new project, I also wanted to experiment with the short film genre; firstly with the film's structure, striving to make the narrative less predictable but also with the sound. In fact we did not record any sound on set, preferring to build the complete soundtrack in post-production. This was possible since we had few dialogue and worked extensively in post doing ADR, Foley and sound design.

I hope that the film will grasp your curiosity!

Best regards,

Gabriel